OHBHI • -Z 4 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE AN ESSAY IN SPECULATIVE THEOLOGY by CHARLES JOURNET Professor at the Major Seminary of Fribourg Translated by A. H. C. DOWNES Volume One: THE APOSTOLIC HIERARCHY SHEED AND WARD LONDON AND NEW YORK HHST PUBLISHED IN 1955 BY SHEED AND WARD LTD. 23 maiden lane LONDON W.C.2 AND sheed and ward, inc. NEW YORK 3 NIHIL OBSTAT: CAROLUS DAVIS, S.T.U CENSOR DEPUTATUS IMPRIMATUR: Ψ edcardus MYERS COADJUTOR WESTMONASTE RIENS IS WES ΓΜΟΝASTERII, DIE JA ADGUfTI, <954 This Ml· k is a translation of L'Eglise du Verbe Incarne, published by Desclée de Brouwer ct Cie., Paris. This book is copyright. No portion of it may be reproduced without written per­ mission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publishers. PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY PURNELL AND SONS, LTD. PAULTON (SOMERSET) AND LONDON AUGUSTINO ET THOMAE DOCTORIBUS ATQUE VIRGINI SENENSI SEGRETARIA DI STATO DI SUA SANTITÀ Dal Vaticano, li 6 Novembre 1952 N. 277721 ^Sex^ra^months ago you had the thought of offering to the Sovereign Pontiff the second volume of your study on the Church of the λ Void Incar­ nate. I am happy to inform you that His Holiness was pleased to accept, with an affectionate interest, this expression of filial loyalty, and that he has charged me to express his warm thanks. This new volume is devoted to the study of the internal structure of the Church and of her Catholic unity; in it you have once more made it your care to put your vast learning at the service of the teaching of theology. There will doubtless be discussion over this or that point, but as far as your work as a whole is concerned you are to be congratulated on having carried out successfully a work which will help many of our contemporaries to get a firmer grasp of this mystery of the Church, which perpetuates through the centuries and the vicissitudes of history the very mystery of the Word Incarnate. The Holy Father is thus pleased to invoke wholeheartedly upon yourself and the successful continuation of your work a special outpouring of divine grace, and in token of his paternal gratitude he gladly grants you the favour of the Apostolic Benediction. VV ith my personal thanks for the copy of your book which you so thought­ fully sent me, please accept, Monsignor, my hearty good wishes in Our Lord G. B. ΜΟΝΠΝΙ Monseigneur Charles Journet Grand Séminaire Fribourg Subst. VOLUME ONE THE APOSTOLIC HIERARCHY Dotata Patris gloria Respersa Sponsi gratia, Regina formosissima . . . Hymn, in Vesp. Dedicat. VOLUME ONE: THE APOSTOLIC HIERARCHY: THE IMMEDIATE EFFICIENT CAUSE OF THE CHURCH AND OF HER APOSTOLICITY Page Introduction xxv Chapter I THE PHASES OF THE ACT GENERATIVE OF THE CHURCH, OR, THE SUCCESSIVE DIVINE REGIMES OF THE CHURCH 1. THE REGIME PRIOR TO THE CHURCH 2. THE FIRST REGIME OF THE CHURCH 3. THE EXISTING REGIME OF THE CHURCH A. The Mediation B. The Mediation Incarnation the Hierarchy of the of 1. the true explanation 2. 3. 4. false explanations THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE HIERARCHIC ACTION ACTION FROM Λ DISTANCE AS SUPPLEMENTARY 4. THE FUTURE REGIME OF THE CHURCH 2 4 6 6 7 7 10 12 *4 *5 Chapter II THE APOSTOLIC HIERARCHY THE FUNCTION OF THE APOSTOLIC HIERARCHY THE CHAIN OF APOSTOLICITY WHY A HIERARCHY? THE WORK OF THE DISCIPLES MORE WONDERFUL. IN A WAY, THAN THAT OF JESUS 4. RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE HIERARCHY 5. THE HIERARCHY AS MYSTERY ANDAS MIRACLE ix I. 1. 2. 3. 16 16 !7 18 l9 20 CONTENTS II. THE TWO POWERS OF THE APOSTOLIC HIERARCHY 1. THE BASIS OF THE DIVISION OF THE TWO HIERARCHIC PO WERS 2. THEIR RESPECTIVE CHARACTERS 3. THEIR MUTUAL DEPENDENCE 4. THE CHURCH TEACHING AND THE CHURCH BELIEVING III. THE CHURCH AS ISSUE OF THE HIERARCHY 1. THE POWER OF ORDER'S HELP IN FORMING THE CHURCH: SACRA­ MENTAL CHARACTER AND SACRA MENTAL GRACE 2. THE RÔLE OF THE JURISDICTIONAL OR PASTORAL POWER 3. THE MEANING OF THE MAXIM "OUTSIDE THE CHURCH NO SALVATION' 4. THE JUST “ WITHOUT" BELONG TO THE CHURCH BT DESIRE, NOT IN ACCOMPLISHED ACT 5. THE DIFFERENT ATTITUDES THAT MAT CO-EXIST WITH MEM­ BERSHIP BT DESIRE 6. CATHOLIC OECUMENICISM EXCURSUS I. ON THREE WATS OF DEFINING THE WORD "CHURCH" AND ON THE CORRESPONDING WATS OF ASSIGNING HER CAUSES Chapter III THE POWER OF ORDER CONSIDERED AS MINISTERIAL CAUSE OF THE CHURCH I. THE CHRISTIAN CULTUS, AXIS OF THE EXISTING CHURCH 1. THE INSTITUTION OF THE CHRISTIAN CULTUS BT CHRIST THE PRIEST A. The Double Movement of the Christian Cultus 1. THE ASCENDANT MEDIATION OF THE CULTUS! THE SACRIFICLAL OFFERING 2. THE DESCENDENT MEDIATION OF THE CULTUS: THE INSTRUMEN­ TAL CAUSALITY OF THE PASSION B. The Liturgical Character of the Christian Religion C. The Church Constituted by a Triple Incorporation with Christ D. Incorporation with Christ the Priest 2. THE CONTINUATION OF THE CHRISTIAN CULTUS IN THE CHURCH A. The Bloodless Sacrifice B. The Sacraments 3. THE SACRAMENTAL POWER COMMON TO ALL CHRISTIANS, AND THE SACRAMENTAL POWER OF THE HIERARCHT x CONTENTS II. THE SACRAMENTAL POWER COMMON TO ALL MEMBERS OF THE CHURCH 1. THE EXISTENCE OF A SACRAMENTAL POWER 2. THE NATURE OF THE SACRAMENTAL POWER 3. THE GENERAL EFFECTS OF THE SACRAMENTAL POWER 4. THE SACRAMENTAL POWER OF THE BAPTIZED AND THE CONFIRMED 5. CONSECRATION TO THE CULTUS AND MORAL SANCTITY HI. THE POWER OF ORDER, OR THE HIERARCHIC SACRAMENTAL POWER 1. THE EXISTENCE AND NATURE OF THE POWER OF ORDER 2. THE DIVISIONS AND DEGREES OF THE PO WER OF ORDER A. The Divisions of the Power of Order B. The Degrees of the Power of Order 3. THE RÔLE OF THE PO WER OF ORDER IN THE CHURCH IV. THE MATERNAL FUNCTION OF THE HIERARCHY 1. CHRISTIANS UNEQUAL BEFORE THE HIERARCHY BUT EQUAL AS TO SALVATION 2. THE MATERNITY OF THE CHURCH 3. THE DEFICIENCIES OF CERTAIN MEMBERS OF THE HIERARCHY; TEXTS OF ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM AND ST. AUGUSTINE EXCURSUS II. SOME RECENT VIEWS ON THE SACRAMENT OF ORDER Page 68 68 70 73 75 77 77 80 80 86 90 90 93 95 98 Chapter IV THE POWER OF JURISDICTION, SECOND MINISTERIAL CAUSE OF THE CHURCH I. THE ORIGIN OF THE JURISDICTIONAL POWER 1. CHRIST HEAD OF THE CHURCH, AT ONCE PRIEST AND KING: HIS CONFERRING OF TWO PO WERS ON THE CHURCH, THE ONE SACRA­ MENTAL, THE OTHER JURISDICTIONAL 2. THE SACRAMENTAL POWER “PURE INSTRUMENT", BUT THE JURISDICTIONAL “SECOND CAUSE" II. DIVISION INTO EXTRAORDINARY OR EXCEPTIONAL JURISDICTION AND PERMANENT OR REGULAR JURISDICTION 1. THE REASON FOR THIS DIVISION 2. THE TWO JURISDICTIONS UNITED IN THE APOSTLES 121 121 124 127 127 128 CONTENTS Page III. THE EXTRAORDINARY JURISDICTION OR APOSTOLATE /. THE SPIRITUAL PO WERS OF THE APOSTOLA TE A. Promulgation of Certain Sacraments B. Exceptional Prophetic Knowledge of the Substance 130 131 131 of i 32 Reflation I. THE APOSTLES’ KNOWLEDGE GREATER THAN THAT OF PRECEDING AGES 2. THE APOSTLES’ KNOWLEDGE SUPERIOR TO THAT OF THE CHURCH, PRESENT AND FUTURE 3. 4. PROPHETIC KN DATED GE NOT EXTINCT IN THE CHURCH 132 136 THE WORD OF GOD MADE KNOWN IN TWO WAYS: BY PURE 138 ’39 PROPHECY AND BY TEACHING 5. I32 “PROPHETISM” AND THE LIGHT OF FAITH C. Infallible Expression of the Revelation by Way· of 142 HÎII D. Extraordinary Power ment; Peter’s Power Organization and of Govern­ Compared with That of the Other of Apostles Apostles 144, 148 ’49 ’49 ’49 ’49 150 ’5’ ’5’ EXCURSUS III. THE THREE KINGSHIPS OF CHRIST ’53 E. The Gift of Miracles 2. THE SANCTITY OF THE APOSTLES A. The Apostles, Principle of the Charity of the Church 1. THE CONTAGION OF THEIR CHARITY 2. THE EXCELLENCE OF THEIR CHARITY 3. 4. THEIR POWER TO JUDGE THE WORLD THEIR INTERCESSION B. Marks of the Charity of the Chapter V THE PERMANENT JURISDICTION OR PONTIFICATE I. THE CHIEF DIVISIONS OF THE JURISDICTIONAL POWER 1. THE FOUR CHIEF DIVISIONS OF THE PERMANENT JURISDICTION 2. SYNOPTIC TABLE OF THESE DIVISIONS •· xn 156 ’57 160 CONTENTS Pagi II. FIRST DIVISION OF THE PERMANENT JURIS­ DICTION: DECLARATORY POWER AND CANONICAL POWER r. THE DECLARATORY POWER A. The Rôle of the Declaratory Power B. The Declaratory Power the Highest Manifestation of the 160 160 ι6ι Permanent Jurisdiction C. The Bipartite Division 160 Powers of the Church and Jurisdictional Power to be Pre­ of the Sacramental ferred to the Tripartite into D. The Field Declaratory Power: “Infallible Truths” and “Dogmatic Facts” E. Some of its of the Other Applications 166 167 170 177 177 EXCURSUS IV. IS THERE AN INSTRUMENTAL JURISDICTION? 2. THE CANONICAL OR LEGISLA TIVE PO WER A. The Nature of the Canonical or Legislative Power 1. THE CANONICAL POWER’S DERIVATION FROM THE DECLARATORY 177 POWER AS AN EFFECT FROM ITS CAUSE 2. ITS EXTENSION AND PARTICULARIZATION OF THE VIRTUALITIES THAT GO TO FORM THE CHURCH 3. THE MANNER OF ITS REPRESENTATION IN SCRIPTURE 4. THE WORDS “POWER” AND “SOCIETY” TO BE APPLIED TO 178 179 THE CHURCH AND TO THE CIVIL ORDER ANALOGICALLY AND 180 NOT UNIVOCALLY 5. IS THE CHURCH A “SOCIETY”, OR AN “INSTITUTION”, OR AN “organism”? 6. 7. THE LIMITATIONS OF THE CANONICAL POWER THE RELATIONS OF THE DECLARATORY AND CANONICAL POWERS 181 182 183 B. The Principal Subdivisions of the Canonical or Legislative Power 1. THE “ENDS” OF THE CANONICAL POWER 2. THE SUCCESSIVE “INSTANCES” OF THE CANONICAL POWER 3. THE 5. “matters” envisaged by the canonical power “degrees of realization” of the canonical power table of the divisions of the canonical power EXCURSUS V. THE ACCUSATION OF LEGALISM MADE BY THE ORTHODOX Xlll f 183 183 184 186 187 187 188 At. CONTENTS Chapter VI THE RELATIONS OF THE CANONICAL POWER AND THE POLITICAL POWER Pag/ I. THE ANALOGICAL CHARACTER OF THE CANONI­ CAL JURISDICTION THE CHURCH'S LIKENESS TO CIVIL SOCIETE ANALOGICAL ONLT THE ORIGINAL CHARACTERS OF THE CANONICAL PO WER 3· THE ACTION OF THE CANONICAL PO WER IMMEDIA TE OR MEDIA TE II. THE ESSENTIAL CLAIMS OF THE CHURCH LN HER RELATIONS WITH THE STATE 1. THE CHURCH'S NEED TO SAFEGUARD HER OWN EXISTENCE: DEFENCE OF THE SPIRITUAL ORDER A. Man’s Twofold Motion Towards God: Through the Temporal Community and Through Community B. The Respective Dominions of Church Church, by Nature, not Territorial 2. the and I94 I94 I94 I95 196 iq6 Spiritual State: the THE CHRISTIANIZATION OF CIVH LIFE BT THE CHURCH: ILLU­ MINATION OF THE TEMPORAL ORDER A. The Spiritual Connected with some Temporal Activities Simply on Account of their Existence in a Human Subject ; with Others, on Account of their Content B. Cultures Illuminated by the Kingdom of God; but the Cultural Work thus Sublimated Itself Outside the Kingdom C. Temporal Values Sublimated and Values Become Spiritual D. The Spiritual Light’s Union with the Temporal for the Building of a Christian Society E. The Church, Though Not of the World, the "World’s Salvation F. The Law of the Duality of Church and State Valid only for Time: The Church's Eventual Re-absorption of the World ΙΠ. THE REGIME OF SECULAR CHRISTENDOM 1. CONSECRATIONAL CHRISTENDOM AND SECULAR CHRISTENDOM 2. TWO WATS OF JUSTIFYING A SECULAR CHRISTENDOM 3. THE HISTORICAL ORDER OF SUCCESSION OF THE TWO CHRISTENDOMS xiv 201 203 203 206 208 208 211 213 214 214 215 220 CONTENTS IV. THE REGIME OF CONSECRATIONAL CHRISTENDOM 1. THE NATURE OF MEDIEVAL SOCIETY A. Christian Values Integrated in the Structure of Society B. The Juridical Condition of the Gentiles Without and Within Christendom 222 222 224 1. st. Augustine’s recognition of the legitimacy of political GROUPS MADE UP OF UNBELIEVERS 2. THE DOCTRINE OF ST. THOMAS AND OF HIS FOLLOWERS 3. 222 224 226 THE ABSOLUTE INVIOLABILITY OF THE NATURAL RIGHTS AND 228 CONSCIENCE OF UNBELIEVERS C. The Juridical Condition of the Jews in Medieval Christendom 23I i . the jews tolerated, not in the church but in christendom 233 2. THE SPECIAL REASON FOR THIS TOLERANCE: THE MYSTERY OF ISRAEL 3. 4. 5. 233 235 236 238 THE CIVIL STATUS OF THE JEWS HOW JUSTIFIED AN APPRECIATION OF THE MEDIEVAL SOLUTION D. The Position E. Characters of of 24O Heretics Consecrational Christendom 1. COMPENETRATION OF CHURCH AND STATE 2. 3. “church” and “christendom” partially synonymous 241 24I 242 CONSECRATIONAL CHRISTENDOM A DYNAMIC IDEAL RATHER THAN A REALIZED IDEA 243 2. AUTHORITY OVER THE TEMPORAL IN A CONSECRATIONAL REGIME Λ. The Power of the Prince 1. the prince necessarily a member of the church 244 244 244 2. the two politically legitimate regimes recognized by THE ANCIENTS 3. “POLITICAL 245 AUGUSTINIANISM ” AND “CONSECRATIONAL politics” 4. INSTITUTION AND DEPOSITION OF THE TEMPORAL POWER B. The Power of the Clergy 1. the field of the canonical power in the middle ages 2. THE CANONICAL POWER’S TWO WAYS OF CALLING ON THE SECULAR ARM 3. 4. 5. THE TWO SWORDS THE CANONICAL POWER NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR BLOODSHED THE EXTRA-CANONICAL POWERS OF THE CLERGY XV 246 247 249 249 25O 25I 252 255 CONTENTS Pag» 6. a "theocratic” or "consecrational” regime? 7. TABLE OF THE POWERS of MEDIEVAL CHRISTENDOM '. THE COERCIVE PO WER OF THE CHURCH AND ITS MEDIEVAL EXERCISE A. Theological Questions: The Coercive Power in Itself 1. THE END OF THE COERCIVE POWER 2. THE ROOT OF THE COERCIVE POWER 3· EFFECTS OF SANCTIONS ON THE GUILTY WHOM DOES THE COERCIVE POWER REACH? THE NATURE OF ECCLESIASTICAL SANCTIONS FOR WHAT EXERCISE OF THE COERCIVE POWER IS THE CHURCH, UNDERSTOOD FORMALLY AND THEOLOGICALLY, RESPONSIBLE? B. Mixed Questions: The Exercise History, and the of the 258 260 262 262 262 264 265 266 268 271 Coercive Power ln 272 Inquisition I. RECOURSE HAD TO THE SECULAR ARM PARTICULARLY FOR PENALTIES LESSER THAN THAT OF DEATH a. The Church’s Rights b. The Secular Arm Able to Act under the Church Either as Principal Cause or as Instrument c. St. Augustine's Two Attitudes on the Coercion of Heretics d. Conclusion 272 272 274 275 279 2. THE DEATH PENALTY AND THE MEDIEVAL REPRESSION OF HERESY a. The State of the Question b. Legitimacy of the Death Penalty in Certain Cases c. Whether the Church Could Demand it of the Medieval State Against Heresy d. The Thirty-third Proposition of the Bull Exsurge Domine e. Recourse to the Secular Arm in the Manner of the Church and the Manner of the State: From St. Augustine to St. Thomas f The Relation of the Pagan Empire to Christianity Unlike that Medieval Christendom to Heresy 3. TORTURE AND CRUELTY IN THE MIDDLE AGES a. The Middle Ages and Modem Times b. Condemnation of Torture by Nicholas I: Its Revival c. Judgment on the Use of Torture C. Summary 1. COERCION IN HELL 2. SPIRITUAL COERCION IN TIME 3. RECOURSE TO THE SECULAR ARM 4. THE WAY OF THE CHURCH AND THE WAY OF THE STATE xvi 280 280 281 283 286 287 292 294 294 295 297 298 298 298 300 301 CONTENTS 5. THE TWO REGIMES, CONSECRATIONAL AND SECULAR 6. TORTURE Pagt 302 303 7. WHAT THE CHURCH APPROVES AS RIGHTEOUSNESS IN THE STATE ABLE TO BE DEFILEMENT FOR HERSELF 3. THE HOLE WAR AND THE CRUSADE A. The Expression “Holy War” 1. WAR, DIABOLIC AND DIVINE 2. WARS, JUST AND UNJUST: PEACE STRONGER IN ITSELF THAN WAR 3. 4. THE CHURCH’S FIRST AND SECOND ACTION “JUST” WARS AND “HOLY” WARS 5. THE CHURCH, AS SUCH, DOES NOT MAKE WAR B. The Formation of an Ethic of the Holy War 304 304 305 305 306 308 308 3IO 31 i 1. THE NEW TESTAMENT 31Ι 2. ST. AUGUSTINE AND ST. GREGORY 312 3. THE OSCILLATIONS OF MEDIEVAL THOUGHT 314 C. The Crusades 319 319 1. THE HISTORICAL FACTS 2. VARIOUS MEANINGS OF THE WORD “CRUSADE” D. St. Bernard’s Distinction of E. Theology of the Crusade the Two Swords 322 323 324 Chapter VII SECOND AND THIRD DIVISIONS OF THE PERMANENT JURISDICTION I. THE ACCIDENTAL DIVISION: THE DEGREES OF JURISDICTIONAL ASSISTANCE i. HUMAN HESITA TION AND DIVINE ASSISTANCE а. THE JURISDICTIONAL PO WER'S THREE TASKS, CORRESPONDING TO DIFFERENT KINDS OF DIVINE ASSISTANCE 3. THE “ PROPOSITION" OF THE REVELATION: “ABSOLUTE ASSIST­ ANCE” 4. “PROTECTION" OF THE REVELATION AND THE TWO FORMS OF “PRUDENTIAL ASSISTANCE" 5. A TEXT OF ST. THOMAS б. THE “EMPIRICAL EXISTENCE" AND “BIOLOGICAL ASSISTANCE” OF THE CHURCH 7. THE CHARACTERS OF THE DIVINE ASSISTANCE: EXTRINSIC, b. ANALOGICAL, c. POSITIVE 8. DEFINITION OF DIVINE ASSISTANCE xvii 331 331 332 332 333 334 335 335 337 CONTENTS II. THE MATERIAL DIVISION: SPECULATIVE AND PRACTICAL MESSAGE OF THE CHURCH 338 i THE POWER TO ANNOUNCE SPECULATIVE TRUTH 338 338 338 339 342 342 343 345 A. Truths Guaranteed Absolutely 1. THE EXPLICIT REVELATION 2. DOGMAS, OR TRUTHS DEFINED AS REVEALED 3. TRUTHS DEFINED IRREVOCABLY, BUT NOT AS REVEALED a. Accord of Theologians b. Two Different Theological Explanations c. The Consequence of this Divergence of Opinion 4. IN PROPOSING THESE THREE CLASSES OF TRUTHS THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH ONLY CONDITIONS FAITH AND ITS OBJECT; IT IS NOT ITS BASIS B. The Secondary Speculative Message : Truths Guaranteed Prudent ially 1. THESE TRUTHS OF TWO KINDS: INCLUDED OR ANNEXED 2. THE EXISTENCE OF A PRUDENTIAL AUTHORITY 3. PRUDENTIAL AUTHORITY THE BASIS OF RELIGIOUS ASSENT 4. TWO FORMS OF PRUDENTIAL ASSISTANCE: INFALLIBLE 347 347 349 351 AND FALLIBLE EXCURSUS VI. THE CONDEMNATION OF GALILEO a. THE POWER TO PROPOSE PRACTICAL TRUTH A. Division of Christian Moral Precepts 1. precepts of the human order 2. PRECEPTS OF THE CHRISTIAN ORDER 3. SYNOPTIC TABLE OF THESE DIVISIONS B. The Force of the 354 359 359 359 360 362 Prudential Precepts I. PRECEPTS OF GENERAL APPLICATION a. Thar Infallibility Radically Absolute b. Their Infallibility Formally Prudential c. Not Necessarily Representing a Maximum of Prudence d. How Defined and Recognized e. The Commandments of the Church f. Approbation of Religious Orders 2. PRECEPTS OF PARTICULAR APPLICATION a. Their Nature b. Fallible Prudential Assistance c. Relation Between the Notions of Authority and Infallibility •·· XVU1 369 3θ9 369 STO CONTENTS C. The Force 1. of Decisions of the Biological Order 371 371 their fallibility 2. THEIR WEAKNESS MORE APPARENT IN PROPORTION AS THEY 372 372 377 ARE CLOSER TO THE TEMPORAL 3. THEIR NATURE BENEFICIAL IN THE MAJORITY OF CASES 4. THE “SUPERIOR SENSE OF OPPORTUNENESS” 3. CONCLUSIONS ON THE JURISDICTIONAL POWERS A. The Gospel Words on the Jurisdictional Authority Indicative of Several Distinct Pouters B. These Powers Not to be Seen as Separated C. Their Degree of Sanctity D. The Relation Between the Jurisdictional Teaching the Charity of the Church E. The Jurisdictional Power’s Influence Direct on Church and Indirect on the World 379 379 379 3θο and the 381 Chapter VIII FOURTH DIVISION OF THE PERMANENT JURISDICTION: PARTICULAR AND UNIVERSAL JURISDICTION I. PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS: APOSTOLATE AND EPISCOPATE 1. CHRIST'S CONFERRING OF CERTAIN EXCEPTIONAL OR EXTRA­ ORDINARY POWERS AND CERTAIN REGULAR OR PERMANENT POWERS ON THE APOSTLES: THE IMMEDIATE FOUNDATION OF THE PERMANENT JURISDICTION BY CHRIST 2. THE OPINIONS OF BELLARMINE AND SUAREZ ON THE PO WERS OF ORDER AND JURISDICTION IN THE APOSTLES 3. POINTS OF AGREEMENT: THE EXTRAORDINARY JURISDICTION OF THE APOSTLES 4. POINTS OF DIVERGENCE: DOES THE EXTRAORDINARY JURISDIC­ TION CONTAIN THE PERMANENT VIRTUALLY OR FORMALLY? 5. PETER'S RECEPTION, DIRECT FROM CHRIST, OF NOT ONLY HIS EXTRAORDINARY APOSTOLIC POWER BUT ALSO HIS PERMANENT POWER OVER THE WHOLE CHURCH 6. THE PERMANENT JURISDICTION DISTRIBUTED, BY DIVINE ORDINANCE, ON TWO PLANES: EITHER PARTICULAR OR UNIVERSAL 7. THE DERIVED DIVISIONS ARISING FROM CANON LA W II. THE PARTICULAR JURISDICTION PROPER TO BISHOPS 1. UNITAR r EPISCOPA TE AND COLLEGIA TE EPISCOPA TE 2. THE EPISCOPA TE, IN DIVINE LA W, ESTABLISHED FOR PAR TICULAR CHURCHES XIX 382 382 3θ4 3θ6 386 3θ7 3θ9 390 390 390 392 CONTENTS 3. THE BISHOP'S POWERS AS SHEPHERD OF HIS OWN PARTICULAR FLOCK 4. THE EPISCOPAL STATE OF ITS NATURE J STA TE OF PERFECTION 5. THE BISHOP RULER, PASTOR AND FOUNDATION OF HIS OWN PARTICULAR CHURCH IN CHRISTS NAME ALONE III. THE UNIVERSAL OR SOVEREIGN JURISDICTION i. PROVIDENTIAL REASON FOR A SOVEREIGN JURISDICTION A. Monarchical Government Meets the Need of Local Churches: Still More of the Universal Church B. The Reason for this Need: The Church, Founded Round a Single Visible Head, is to Retain this Essential Structure C. The Witness of the New Testament to the Primacy D. The Three Ages of the World: The Age of Pentecost to be That of the Primacy of Peter E. The Pope’s Power Derived Immediately from Christ; That of the Bishops, Through the Mediation of the Pope F. The Profound Kinship of these Two Powers G. The Particular Power of the Bishops Ruled, and Some­ times Limited, in its Exercise, by the Universal Power H. The Apostolicity of Jurisdiction I. The Mystery of the Incarnation as Related to the Eucharist and the Primacy of Peter Pagi 392 395 39θ 397 397 397 399 400 401 4Ο3 4Ο5 4o6 407 408 2. THE SUPREME JURISDICTION DOES NOT BELONG AS A “ PROPER" PO WER TO THE BISHOPS A. The Sum of Particular Jurisdictions Does not Amount 409 Universal Jurisdiction Church During a Vacancy of the Holy See 409 411 3. THE SUPREME JURISDICTION NEVERTHELESS "PARTICIPATED" BT THE BISHOPS ASSOCIATED WITH THE SOVEREIGN PONTIFF AND FORMING THE EPISCOPAL COLLEGE A. The Colleglate Jurisdiction of the Bishops United With 411 to the B. The Pope B. The Scriptural Basis C. The Episcopal College Dispersed Through the World: Its Distinctive Signs D. The Episcopal College Assembled in Council E. Its Members Mandatories of Christ, Not of the Peoples F. The Church of the Oecumenical Councils the 4. THE SUPREME JURISDICTION, IN ITS INTEGRAL WHOLENESS, LODGED "FIRST' IN THE POPE ALONE A. The Pope Vicar of Christ, Not of the Church B. The Sole Regime of Divine Right xx 41 I 4’3 414 416 418 419 420 420 421 , CONTENTS C. The Pope’s Jurisdiction Pastoral—That is to say, Plenary, Immediate—and Ordinary or Proper D. The Sole Remedy for a Bad Pope: a Text of Cajetan’s on Prayer 5. PETER'S SUCCESSOR THE BISHOP OF ROME A. The Link Between the Roman and the Universal Episco­ Page 423 425 427 pate: Manifestation of the Apostolic Succession B. This Link Not Foreseen: Effected by Absorption: Appar­ ently Indissoluble in Right C. Two Extreme Opinions: Connection Not Indissoluble; Connection Indissoluble Even in Fact , “Roman Church” a Name of Humility but also of Miracle Ε. The Pope, as such, Roman, Never Italian; He Alone Subject of No State; Sense in which His Sovereignty is “Foreign” F. On the Present Custom of Choosing the Pope from Among the Italian Cardinals 6. THE VATICAN DEFINITION OF PAPAL INFALLIBILITY A. The Different Forms of Assistance Bestowed on the Pope B. The Vatican Definition C. The Revelation of Infallibility Contained in the Gospel D. Infallibility Not Impeccability E. Indications of Belief in the Infallibility of the Bishop of Rome F. The Doctrine of Infallibility Prior to the Vatican Definition G. The Problem of the Pope’s Power to Define His Own Infallibility H. The Marks of an Infallible Teaching I. The Human Fear of Infallibility 7. THE PONTIFICAL CITY A. A Contingent Solution 429 431 433 433 43θ 438 438 439 440 445 447 of the Problem of the Popes Apostolic or Canonical Sovereignty and Independ­ ence of the B. Political Principate C. The Bearer of the Apostolic Sovereignty of his Nature Independent D. His Independence Radical and Inalienable E. The Apostolic Power’s Right to Fix the Conditions of its Own Normal Exercise F. The Apostolic Right to a Civil Principate xxi 447 447 448 448 CONTENTS G. The Sacred Character of this Principate H. The Hight sr of Politicai. Principates Involved in it I. The Territorial Principate J. The Two Forms of the Pontifical Polity: the Old States of the Church 1. appearance of the old states 2. TEMPORAL POWER OF THE CONSECRA TIONAL TYPE 3. ITS SPIRITUAL CHARACTER JUXTAPOSED 4. THE POPE’S DEFENCE OF HIS RIGHTS AS PONTIFF AND AS PRINCE 5. THE TEMPORAL PRINCIPATE OF ITS NATURE LIMITED 6. AN ECCLESIASTICAL STATE AT JERUSALEM ? 7. THE POPE AS SUZERAIN 8. CAN THE VICAR OF CHRIST BE A PRINCE? 9. THE USE MADE OF THE PRINCELY AUTHORITY 10. THE THOUGHT OF ST. BERNARD 11. THE LESSON OF THE GOSPEL 12. THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE OLD STATES OF THE CHURCH K. The New Pontifical State 1. TRADITION AND INNOVATION 2. SPIRITUALIZATION OF THE PONTIFICAL STATE 3. A REVERSAL OF RÔLES L. Roman Pomp Pagt 451 452 452 453 453 454 455 456 457 458 458 459 460 461 462 464 465 465 466 4θ 7 468 8. CONCLUSION: THE MANIFESTATION OF THE ROMAN PRIMACY A. The Primacy in Peter’s Mind, in That of the Roman See, .and 4θ9 That of the Rest of the Church B. The Manifestation of the Prlmacy, at the Outset, Partial and Limited C. Disconformity Produced in the East when the Extraor­ dinary Apostolate passed into the Ordinary Pontificate D. Three Simultaneous Canonical Reglmes in the Church of the Early Centuries E. The Roman Primacy Not Exclusive of a Canonical Pluralism, Simultaneous or Successive, and Able to Bear with Imperfect Solutions F. The Vatican Proclamation, Hastened by the Schism, an Illumination of the Gospel G. The Pope Greater Jurisdiction ally, the Church Greater Absolutely 4θ9 in EXCURSUS VII. THE PRIMACY OF PETER IN THE GOSPEL EXCURSUS VIII. ELECTION OF .4 POPE EXCURSUS IX. LOSS OF THE PONTIFICATE EXCURSUS X. THE ORIGINS AND TRANSMISSION OF POLITICAL POWER xxii 470 470 471 473 474 474 475 479 482 485 CONTENTS Chapter IX THE UNITY AND THE ACTION OF THE HIERARCHY 1. THE UNITY OF THE HIERARCHY /. THE PO WER OF ORDER DEPENDENT ON THE PO WER OF JURIS­ DICTION 2. THE PO WER OF JURISDICTION DEPENDENT IN ITS TURN ON THE PO WER OF ORDER 3. THE UNICITE OF THE HIERARCHY: ONE GOD, ONE CHRIST, ONE HIERARCHY 4. THE INDIVISIBILITY OF THE HIERARCHY: DEVOTION TO THE HIERARCHY 5. THE THREE CHARACTERS OF THE HIERARCHY: CONTINUITY, INSTRUMENTALITY, CONNATURALITY 6. A GENERAL DEFINITION OF THE HIERARCHY 7. THE HIERARCHY OF EXILE AND HIERARCHY OF THE PATRIA 8. OUR LADY AND THE HIERARCHY II. INDIRECT ACTION OF THE HIERARCHY IN THE WORLD 1. SURVIVALS FROM THE PO WER OF ORDER 2. SURVIVALS FROM THE POWER OF JURISDICTION A. The Presence of a Partial and Borrowed Jurisdiction B. The Indirect Effects of the Jurisdictional Power III. THE DIRECT ACTION OF THE HIERARCHY ON THE CHURCH I- CONFORMITY WITH CHRIST AND THE CREATED SOUL OF THE CHURCH 2. THE CHURCH AS CO-REDEMPTIVE 3. THE CREA TED SOUL AND UNCREA TED SOUL OF THE CHURCH EXCURSUS XL THE HIERARCHY IN MO EHLER'S BOOK ON UNITY IN THE CHURCH Page 493 493 494 496 497 501 502 503 504 504 505 506 509 511 512 513 515 516 Chapter X APOSTOLICITY, PROPERTY AND NOTE OF THE TRUE CHURCH I. APOSTOLICITY CONSIDERED AS PROPERTY 526 1. “ APOSTOLIC CHURCH" THE NAME IN ITS PLENITUDE 2. APOSTOLIC MEDIATION AND APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION xxiii 526 526 CONTENTS 3. THE VIRTUE OF APOSTOLICITY 4. THE PROPERTY OF APOSTOLICITY CONSIDERED IN THE CHURCH g BELIEVING 5. THE PROPER TY OF APOSTOLICITY CONSIDERED .IS IN THE CHURCH AT ONCE BELIEVING AND TEACHING 6. APOSTOLICITY AS AN OBJECT OF FAITH II. APOSTOLICITY CONSIDERED THE TRUE CHURCH AS A MARK C. The Place Between All the Notes for the Properties .and Notes Church D. Whether the Notes .are csfïî]ent Churches E. Apostolicity as Note 528 528 529 OF 53O I. PRELIMINARY REMARKS A. The Properties Mysterious, the Notes Miraculous B. The Metaphysical Connection Between All the Pro­ perties and Pagt 527 530 53° 53° in the Treatise 531 on the to be Found Imperfectly in the 531 532 2. APOSTOLICITY .45 A MIXED SIGN, OR THE ARGUMENT FROM PRESCRIPTION A. Continuity A Sure Sign of Truth B. Two Signs of Rupture : a. Dissidence b. Innovation C. Witnesses Appealing to Continuity of Doctrine or of the 532 532 533 Hierarchy D. Whether the Proof of the Apostolic Succession Concerns the Power of Order Only, or Jurisdiction as Well? E. Modernism and the Argument from Prescription 541 543 3. APOSTOLICITY AS PURE SIGN: THE MIRACLE OF THE PERPETUITY OF THE CHURCH A. Persistence of the Hierarchy Β. Persistence of the Teaching C. Persistence of the Social Communion 544 545 546 548 III. THE APOSTOLICITY OF THE CHURCH FORETOLD 1. THE NEW TESTAMENTS PREDICTION OF .4 HIERARCHY CON­ CERNED AT ONCE WITH TEACHING AND WORSHIP 2. THE GENERAL FULFILMENT OF THIS PROPHECY IN THE CHURCH 3. THE PROPHECY CONCERNING PETER EXCURSUS XII. APOSTOLICITY THE GROUND OF NEWMAN'S CON­ VERSION TO CATHOLICISM INDEX xxiv 538 549 549 551 552 554 561 INTRODUCTION The studies on the Church which I began to write some years ago, and to which various reviews such as Vie Spirituelle, Revue Thomiste, Éludes Carm Mi­ taines and others, especially Nova et Vetera, have extended a welcome, were meant as sketches or fragments of a comprehensive work in which I hope to explain the Church, from the standpoint of speculative theology, in terms of the four causes from which she results—efficient, material, formal and final. This work is to be in four books. This is the first of them. It treats of the immediate efficient cause pro­ ducing the Church in the world, that is to say of the two powers, sacramental and jurisdictional, which by virtue of their union constitute the apostolic hierarchy. We shall consider, by way of corollary, the question of apostolicity. A second book will study the nature of the Church as composed, in the image of Christ the Head and of men the members, of a spiritual element essentially invisible (the formal cause or soul of the Church) and of a material element essentially visible (the material cause or body of the Church). From the soul of the Church there derives her unity, and from the body of the Church her catholicity. The third book will deal with the end of the Church, that is to say with God considered as her “separated” Common Good; and then of her interior order which is her immanent common good, and from which results her sanctity. The fourth and last book will deal ■with the Church as she was in the days of her preparation before Christ came; and with what she will be in her consummation, in purgatory and in heaven. In this I shall emphasize simultaneously the continuity of her substantial being and the diversity of her accidental modes. “If St. Thomas should come back to earth,” wrote Père Gardcil, “and could see the dogma of the Church at the point of development it has attained in our day, I do not doubt that he would give it generous space in the third part of his Summa Theologica, between the treatise on the Incar­ nation and the treatise on the sacraments.”1 Works on the Church undertaken since St. Thomas’s time have been chiefly directed—even the Summa de Ecclesia of Turrccremata is not altogether an exception—to defending the Church’s authority, called in question since 1 La crédibilité et l'apologétique, 1912, p. 220 XXV INTRODUCTION the end of the medieval period either by the civil power or by various forms of heresy. The result is that even to-day the questions discussed in treatises on the Church mainly concern either the hierarchy, that is to say the power of order and the power of jurisdiction, or the marks by which the true Church is to be recognized. These will be found for the most part in this first book. This concentration upon apologetic has tended to exclude from treatises de Ealesia all deeper study of the intimate constitution and essential mystery of the Church. It is precisely these, however, that most interest us to-day. We usually find them treated separately under the heading of the Mystical Body of Christ. Doubtless we could justify such a separation on grounds of convenience; but it would be a fatal thing if it led us to believe in the existence of two distinct theological treatises, one, on the Church, dealing with the hierarchical organization, the other, on the Mystical Body, with the inner life of the members of Christ. For that could mean our seeing a separa­ tion of the hierarchical organization and the organization of charity, of the Church and the Body of Christ. Pius XII warned us against any such error in his discourse to the seminarists of Rome on June 24th 1939: “It would be erroneous to distinguish between the juridical Church and the Church of charity. That is not how things are, rather this juridically established Church, having the Sovereign Pontiff for head, is also the Church of Christ, the Church of charity, and of the universal family of Christians.”1 Any such error is impossible if we set out to explain the Church in terms of the four causes on which she essentially depends. The apostolic hierarchy will then represent no more than the immediate efficient cause of the Church, of the Mystical Body. Its proper effect is to give existence to the Church herself, “Christ diffused and communicated”, along with her two consti­ tutive causes, the soul that makes her wholly spiritual and the body that makes her wholly visible; and to set her on the way towards her final cause namely the divine sanctity, which it is her mission to reflect and communicate. In this perspective the four marks, the four notes of the Church, naturally fall into place as corollaries of each of her four causes respectively.2 They are seen as rooted in and growing out of the very essence of the Church, an exteriorization, a normal manifestation, of her mystery. After that we can leave it to apologetic to make the most of these marks in the concrete, to give them a more supple and detailed application as changing times and circumstances may demand. An important question—various aspects of which we shall meet with later on—must be settled at the outset of this work. What meaning is to be attached, in speculative theology, to the word “Church”? 1 Documentation catholique, 20 August 1939, col. 1000. The Holy Father condemned this distinction once more in the encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi, A-A.S., 1943, p. 224. 1 The linking up of the properties and the notes with the four causes of the Church is indicated by Père Garrigou-Lagrange, De Raelatione pa Ecclesiam Catholicam Proposita, Paris 1918, vol. II, pp. 208, 210, 2U, 213. xxvi INTRODUCTION The word Church may be taken, and I shall in this book take it, in its formal, or ontological, or theological sense. So taken it indicates the Church in her entirety, body and soul together. But it indicates the Church alone, pure and unmixed, to the exclusion of all that is other than herself. Looked at in this way, the Church is composed of just men and sinners. But that statement needs further precision. The Church contains sinners. But she does not contain sin. It is only in virtue of what remains pure and holy in them, that sinners belong to her—that is to say in virtue of the sacra­ mental characters of Baptism and Confirmation, and of the theological habits of faith and hope if they still have them. That is the part of their being by which they still cleave to the Church, and are still within her. But in virtue of the mortal sin which has found its way into them and fills their hearts, they belong chiefly to the world and to the devil. “He who commits sin is of the devil” (i John iii. 8). Similarly we can say that the Church contains the just; but precisely in so far as they are just. To the extent to which, beside the profound choice of the will that unites them to God, they still harbour a region of shadows, a concession to venial sin, to that extent they are partially outside the Church.1 Two categories of members alone are wholly within her—the newly baptized who have not yet sinned, and those souls that are consummated in sanctity, all absorbed by the light, like those of whom St. John of the Cross writes, in the last strophe of Iris Canticle, that henceforth they are no more troubled by the assaults of the devil or by the revolts of the passions. To them the words of the Apostle fully apply: “Whoever is bom of God committeth not sin: for his seed abideth in him, and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil.” (i John iii. 9-10.) Thus the frontier of the Church passes through each one of those who call themselves her members, enclosing within her bounds all that is pure and holy, leaving outside all that is sin and stain, “more piercing than any twoedged sword and reaching unto the division of the soul and the spirit, of the joints also and the marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intents of the heart” (cf. Heb. iv. 12). So that even here below, in the days of her pil­ grimage, in the midst of the evil and sin at war in each one of her children, the Church herself remains immaculate; and we can apply to her quite fully and without any restriction the passage of the Epistle to the Ephesians (v. 25-28): “Christ also loved the Church and delivered himself up for it: that he might sanctify it, cleansing it by the laver of water in the word of life: that he might present it to himself a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish."2 1 “ Aliud quippe volumus quia sumus in Christo, et aliud volumus adhuc in hoc saeculo ” (St. Augustine, In Joann. Eoang., tract. 81, no. 4). 1 Soloviev well says that “ the Church is unsoiled by our sins but he errs when he adds that “ she is not in us, although she is made up of us ”, and by reducing her to no more than a pure spiritual form that gathers up believers. Cf. God, Man and the Church, the Spiritual Foundations of Life, trans. D. Attwater, London, page 143. xxvii INTRODUCTION It is therefore always in this formal and theological sense that we take the word "Church” when we call her One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic, the Bride and Body of Christ, the temple and dwelling-place of the Trinity. The sins of her members are not to be identified with the Church, or the imper­ fections of Christians with Christianity’. It is not these that constitute her, or make her visible; but rather her true body, always illuminated by her soul—though the intensity of the illumination may vary from one age to another. But the word "Church” can also be taken in a material manner. We may say, as before, that the Church is composed of just men and sinners. But in this sense the sinners are regarded as entirely within the Church, their sins included, and the Church herself is seen as a mingling of sanctity and sin. Evil has penetrated within her boundaries. This material way of looking at the Church may arise from two very different preoccupations. We meet with it on the one hand among the empiricists, notably the historians, who tend professionally to consider the Church from an exterior, descriptive and phenomenal standpoint. Seeing in her good men and bad men intermixed, they refer the actions of either indiscriminately to herself. They see her as responsible for all the good and all the evil which her members produce in time; she is at once the source, and the scene, of all the high achievements and all the unworthy lapses of Christians. This material way of looking at the Church may be found on the other hand, and for almost opposite reasons, among preachers and the apostolically minded. They are not wanting in love, or in a sense of the mystery of the Church. But they arc led to consider this mystery less under its onto­ logical aspect, which appeals most to the speculative theologian, than under its dynamic, moral, and deontological aspect. Anxious to show Christians that de jure, in virtue of the law of their Baptism, they ought to live altogether in the light, altogether within the frontiers of the Church, they are inclined to assign her not her real frontiers, but the frontiers which she should have, and which indeed she has, as we said, in the newly baptized and in the saints. They cannot bear to envisage any limits to the Church within the soul of any single Christian; they want to push those limits back until they touch the extreme regions of the man, and end by encircling all the obediential powers of his soul. Thus they see the sins of Christians as within the very bosom of the Church, thereby strongly accentuating their almost sacrilegious character. Origen could say that lust and avarice had turned the Church, in certain places, into a den of thieves, and could make Christ Himself borrow the Psalmist’s words to bewail her disorders: “Of what avail is my blood, since I descend into corruption?”; St. Augustine could say that she limps, St. Catherine of Siena that she is leprous. These paradoxical modes of expression may, of course, derive from the famous words of the Apostle : “Know you not that your bodies are the members of Christ? . . . Shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of a harlot? ... xxviii INTRODUCTION Or know you not that your members arc the temple of the Holy Ghost, who is in you, whom you have from God; and you are not your own? For you are bought with a great price.” (i Cor. vi. 15, 19.) Taken formally and ontologically such expressions as those of Origen and Augustine and Catherine might seem to mean that ‘‘Christ sins and has always sinned in His members”—a proposition condemned by the twenty-second session of the Council of Basle,1 It can be said that Christ lives, suffers, and sanctifies Himself in His members. It cannot be said that He sins in His members. It is then from the formal and ontological standpoint that wc shall consider the mystery of the Church. Steadily so to see her makes certain demands upon us. We must resist every tendency to materialize the Church, to confuse her real frontiers with those of the persons who belong to her, of the groups or parties in which they are enrolled. We must be always redrawing by faith her true and living frontiers within these persons, groups and parties, indeed within our own proper personality. And if it be true that nobody knows for certain whether he is worthy of love or of hatred, it is also true that no Christian knows for certain how the boundaries of the Church cut across his own being, whether they pass on this side or that of his heart’s centre of gravity; none of us can do more than say with the Psalmist in fear and trembling: “Judica me Deus, et discerne causam meam ... ab homine iniquo et doloso erue me.” Of this Church—which comes from God by way of Christ and the hierarchy, which is visible, which includes sinners but not their sins—we shall have to say that she is at once purer and vaster than is commonly believed; purer, because she rejects all stain of sin, and vaster because she draw’s to herself everything that begins to spring up in the world from the seed of grace. There is presumption in undertaking a comprehensive essay on the mystery of the Church, the mystery of the incomprehensible riches of Christ as they superabound in the heart of the world’s misery. But the pas­ sage of time inescapably poses very grave questions to every contemporary mind ; and no mere surface apologetic can cope with them. If we can bring into an organic whole the scattered insights that are offered us by the past, these questions can be answered at their true depth. If therefore anything be thought to be true in the pages that follow, let it be attributed to St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, whose faithful disciple I have tried to be. When one has such masters to follow, nothing is easier than to betray by a fidelity that goes no farther than the words, nothing is more difficult than to rediscover beneath familiar, almost banal formulae, the deep intuition that gave them birth. In these great Doctors I have found a theology of the Church more living, more far-reaching and more liberating than that which our manuals commonly contain. In them we feel the active presence of a vision of the mystery of the Church understood as an extension of the Incarnation. That vision we find in the Fathers, Latin as well as Greek; 1 Cf. A. Palmieri, art. “ Favaroni ” (Augustin), Diet, de thiol, cath, col. 2113. xxix INTRODUCTION it is supported by the whole tenor of the New Testament. None of the heresies ever managed to see it in its entirety’, but it was seen from the first and developed down the centuries with infinite delicacy, by the magisterium of this Roman Church which Thomas Aquinas revered so devoutly and to whose correction, when he came to die, he submitted all his writings. This same vision of faith continued to illumine the work of later theologians, and it is good indeed to experience the intimate communion which brings together on such high ground minds that are otherwise so diverse, even opposed: even when on problems not yet decided by the Church I have adopted another opinion than that maintained by some of them, the point at which I have had to abandon them senes but to show the length of the road we have travelled together. And up to a point one can say the same about certain thinkers who have remained outside the Church. Inasmuch as they help us to share in the primordial intuitions of the faith, the texts of the past are never wearisome. They lead the mind into pastures that are always new, which we leave refreshed, not only towards the past, but also towards the problems and situations of to-day. There is only one way in which a tree can prove that it lives, and that is by sending out new shoots and new flowers every spring. Thus, to be always truly itself, the theology of the Church should be always abundant in new consequences. How should we ever have perceived them unless we had been guided by the writings of our contemporaries, whether theologians by vocation or other­ wise?—and those that are not so are occasionally the more sensitive to vibrations coming from worlds that are still in formation.1 The reader will find many repetitions, because my aim has been, while treating of each particular truth concerning the Church, to make the weight of all the others felt. In this first book, the reader should find a sort of sketch foreshadowing all that is to be developed in the rest. I am enough in love with speculative theology' to give it the greater part of my time; but I am well aware that a higher wisdom exists, one which St. Thomas speaks of on the very threshold of his Summa, and which consists, he tells us, in "suffering” divine things. When I come to speak of the omni­ presence of charity, I shall call attention to this experimental knowledge, in virtue of which an individual soul can wonderfully experience the universal mystery of the Church. It was almost exclusively in this way that St. Catherine of Siena knew the Church, and what she has to say of it is better calculated to kindle our hearts than all the writings of the theologians. That is why her name will be found at the head of this book. While writing it I have had in mind another and a greater than she, one in whom were recapitulated and summed up all the riches that the Church, taken as distinct from Christ, taken as the bride of Christ, could offer successively down the 1 It was Newman, who did not see himself as a “ theologian”, who, in the nineteenth century, was one of the first to see the whole importance which the problem of the development of dogma would acquire. Before him came the “ autodidact”, J. A. Moehler. XXX INTRODUCTION ages of faith: all the splendours, all the purity, all the heart-rending sorrow and compassion. I mean the Blessed Virgin Mary. NOTE. For the English translation of the first volume of L'Eglise du Verbe inearné, two Excursus have been added: II: Some Recent Views on the Sacrament of Order: X: The Origins and Transmission of Political Power. Several of the notes have been revised in accordance with these additions, and I have had the opportunity in a considerable number of places of improving upon what I originally wrote. xxxi Chapter I THE PHASES OF THE ACT GENERATIVE OF THE CHURCH, OR, THE SUCCESSIVE DIVINE REGIMES OF THE CHURCH The first act of the divine omnipotence is that by which it creates the universe from nothing, and maintains the substantial being of things by virtue of an unceasing immediate contact. “Now in each thing,” says St. Thomas, “there is a proximate and immediate effect of God. For we proved . . . that God alone can create. Also, in each thing there is some­ thing caused by creation: in bodies, there is primary matter; in incorporeal beings there is their simple essence . . . Accordingly God must be present in all things at the same time: especially since those things He called into being from non-being, are continually preserved in being by Him. Wherefore it is said [Jeremias xxiii. 24] : Ifill heaven and earth; and [Psalmcxxxviii.8 (Vulg.)J: If I ascend into heaven, Thou art there: if I descend into hell, Thou art present.”1 The second act of the divine omnipotence is even more astonishing. It is that by which it seeks to invest and enrich human persons with gifts so won­ derful and so pure that these persons can become, in union with each other and with God, a collective living abode in which God Himself will delight to dwell. When, in the Old Testament, Wisdom speaks, it is to say: “And in all these [peoples and nations] I sought rest, and I shall abide in the inheritance of the Lord ” (Ecclus. xxiv. 11 (Sept.) ). Similarly, towards theend of the Apocalypse, the Church appears to St. John as “ the holy city, the new Jerusalem”; and he hears a great voice coming from the throne and saying: “Behold, the tabernacle of God with men, and he will dwell with them. And they shall be his people: and God himself with them shall be their God” (xxi. 2-3). Now what arc we to say of this act by which God has produced the Church, His abode among men—whether we call the Church a miserable hovel on account of human sin, or a temple on account of the Guest it shelters? Has it known but a single form, unchanged down all the ages? Did God from the beginning produce His Church as it stands to-day, and has time no other part to play than to lend endurance to what was perfect from the start? 1 III Contra Grntrs, cap. Ixviii. “Just as God alone can create, so too He alone can bring crea­ tures to nothing, and He alone upholds them in being lest they fall back into nothing. /\nd thus it must be said that the soul of Christ had not omnipotence with regard to the immutation of creatures” III. q. 13> a·2· B I THE’· CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE The answer is clear. The divine act that produced the Church has been marked by several phases. These might be called the various divine regimes under which the people of God have lived during the course of the ages, the divine regimes of the Church. For God led the Church through various suc­ cessive states, and the purpose of time is to enable this Church not only to endure, but also to progress till it reaches that state which is to be the last one in this world, the state in which it enters the era of the Incarnation and of Pentecost.1 Let us briefly recall the succession of the divine regimes of the people of God and of the Church. i. THE REGIME PRIOR TO THE CHURCH The Angelic Doctor teaches that God originally decided to act upon men directly, that is to say without any intermediary cause, to invest them with the grace of innocence and so to make of them the living abode in which He would come to dwell upon earth. In that respect the first regime of the people of God was profoundly different from those that followed the Fall and with which the Church properly so-called was to begin her course. Neither the mediation of Christ, nor that of any instrumental causes such as the sacramental or jurisdictional powers, was then in question at all. It is clear in fact that the supernatural gifts of grace and truth with which the first man was to be endowed, could not pass by way of Christ, since the Word was not yet incarnate. We must go further. These supernatural gifts were not even given in view of the future sufferings of Christ, since, had man not sinned, God would not have had to redeem him by His sufferings ; since indeed, as St. Thomas thought towards the end of his fife, had man not sinned God would never have become incarnate.2 Consequently, neither the grace conferred on the first man, nor that conferred on the angels, could, properly speaking, be the grace of Christ, gratia Christi. In connection with this point however, to which we shall return, there is a difference between the grace of the first man and the grace of the angels. While on the one hand the grace of innocence had to be lost in order to give place to that of redemption, to which it was ordered only indirectly and materially, the grace of the angels was ontologically preaccorded (both intensively and extensively) to the perfect grace that was to fill the soul of Christ when the 1 It is remarkable that the ancients, who were innocent of our views on the evolution of the universe, and believed in a certain natural immobilism, were conscious, thanks to revelation, of the law of historical development in its most eminent case—that of the spiritual salvation which was to progress from the Fall till the advent of the Messiah. “ The Greek cosmos is a world as it were without history, an eternal order in wliich time has no efficacy, whether because it leaves that order always the same, or because it produces a succession of events which always come back to the same point, through cyclical changes indefinitely repeated. The opposite idea, that reality is subject to radical changes, to fresh impulses, to genuine innovations, would have been impossible before Christianity had come to overturn the cosmos of the Hellenes " (Émile Bréhier, Histoire de a philosophie, vol. I, p. 489). THE SUCCESSIVE REGIMES OF THE CHURCH Word should eventually become incarnate. Consequently, when man’s sin had shattered the harmony of innocence and the Word had resolved to become incarnate so as to die on the cross, the plenary grace created at that instant in His heart became the centre of reference, the locus, of all the graces that existed beforehand in the angels, just as the centre marked afterwards in an already existing circle becomes the locus of every point in the circumference.1 We can go further along this road and add that as soon as the incarnation of the Word was accomplished, the angels began to receive, through the physical intermediation of the humanity of Christ, those graces which hitherto they had received immediately. Thus Christ is indeed the Kang of angels, now distributing to them the essential grace they have always possessed and the accidental graces supcradded thereto.2 It is clear furthermore, according to the doctrine of St. Thomas, that had mankind continued in innocence the supernatural gifts of grace and truth would have reached them without passing through instrumental causes such as the sacramental or jurisdictional powers. The law of innocence meant in fact that spiritual life would flow from God to the soul and from the soul to the body : it would have been a breach of this law if grace and truth had come to the soul, which is spiritual, by way of sensible means or signs.3 Thus the divine omnipotence was the sole cause of the people of God in its first form. Doubtless the ministry of angels was already in operation to fortify men against the wiles of the devil1 and to bring them the divine com­ mands;5 but the object of this mediation, which, in any case, was wholly spiritual, remained accidental. The essential gifts of grace and truth came immediately from God. Thus the divine government, prior to the coming of the Church, excluded all corporeal or visible intermediaries. 1 “ Of all this multitude [angels and men] Christ is the Head: for He stands nearer to God and He participates in the divine gifts more perfectly than men and the angels” (St. Thomas, III, q. 8, a. 4). The creation and justification of the angels, remark the Salman licenses, who were never to make shipwreck but would always endure, “ might very well have been ordered to Christ as to their end, and consequently be the term of His influence in the order of final causality ” {De Incarnatione, disp. 16, dub. 5, no. 77). 2 The influx of Christ, says St. Thomas, “ attains not only men but also the angels; for we read in die Epistle to the Ephesians [i. 20-22] dial God the Father set Christ down on His right hand in the heavenly places, above all principality and power, and virtue and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come, and hath subjected all things under His feet ” (III q. 8, a. 4). I think we are justified in saying of the grace of the angels what John of St. Thomas said of die grace of die just before Christ: ” The influx which the Word of God, conjoindy with the Father and the Holy Spirit, bestowed in a direct manner on the just of old, this He con­ tinues still to bestow, now’ however availing Himself of the human nature with which He is clothed, as an instrumental cause ” (III, q. 61, disp. 23, a. 3, no. 95; Vives Edn., vol. IX, p. 141). Men have a greater solidarity than angels have with Christ, a solidarity not merely of nature but of destiny; their whole life is drawn in the wake of His. 2 III, q. 6f, a. 2. Cajctan notes in his commentary on this article that if the state of innocence had been maintained, children would have been born in a state of grace and with the supernatural gifts that perfect the intelligence. 4 St. Thomas, I, q. 113, a. 4, ad 2. * ibid. a. 1, ad 2. THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE 2. THE FIRST REGIME OF THE CHURCH Why did God allow the state of innocence to be destroyed? We know the answer: God permits evil only to make ofit the occasion for a greater good.1 To the regime of creation, which might appear perfect, succeeds the regime of redemption which, on the whole, is to be better still. These two regimes differ profoundly. That of creation excluded ever)' visible mediator;® that of redemption was to be essentially the regime of a Mediator, awaited, then recognized, “the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a redemption for all” (t Tim. ii. 6). The first regime gave birth to the first form of the people of God. The regimes that followed were to give birth to the Church properly so-called, which was not to be a people of God pure and simple, but a people of God marked with the sign of the redemptive Incarnation, a people of God called the “Body” of Christ, a people whose vocation it would be to prolong in space and time His temporal fife. Immediately after the Fall the first of the regimes of the Church began. Grace and truth were now to be dispensed through a visible mediation. The grace bestowed on souls from then onwards was that same grace which the Redeemer would one day merit by His love and pay for by His sufferings. In this sense it was already the grace of Christ, gratia Christi. And that is why it worked inwardly not only to begin the organization of the new people of God, but to lead this people gradually through the vicissitudes of their history towards the concrete and definitive status which it was to receive from Christ Himself. To make it obscurely felt from the very outset that it came by anticipation from the mystery of the redemptive Incarnation, that is to say from the mystery of a God who made Himself visible and came down into our flesh, this grace was now given in dependence on visible signs, on outward actions, which theologians were to call sacraments. These sacraments were doubtless rudimentary. They were not yet, as they were to become under the New Law, the instrumental means and causes of grace ; they were merely practical signs of it, serving to designate those on whom God in His mercy sent His grace immediately, provided they were rightly disposed.3 These sacraments existed already under the law of nature, but their number and importance 1 “ Al though almighty and sovereignly good, God nevertheless permits evils to arise in the universe which He could present, in case He should thereby exclude a greater good or provoke worse evils” (Π-ΙΙ, q. io, a. n). 1 St. Thomas, who holds that if man had not sinned God would not have become incarnate, affirms nevertheless that prior to the original sin Adam was aware of the future incarnation of the Word (II-II, q. 2, a. 7). How reconcile these two views? The Salmanticcnses supply the answer: Adam did not believe that Christ would be the Head of the people of God in respect of the state of innocence, but he did believe—and this is something very different—that Christ would be Head of the people of God in a new order of tilings, which, for the rest, lay quite beyond his ken (De Incarnatione, disp. 16, dub. 4, nos. 62 and 63). 1 The sacraments of the Old Law “ do not cause grace; they merely signified that it would be given through the Passion of Christ the sacraments of the New Law, on the other hand, “ con­ tain grace, and confer it on those who receive them with the required dispositions ” (Council of Florence, Denz., 695). THE SUCCESSIVE REGIMES OF THE CHURCH was to be laid down in detail under the Law of Moses. As the history of the people of God unfolds, and the work of salvation progresses, we shall see the sacramental principle coming more and more to the fore. An analogous course was followed in the preaching of divine truth. First of all the primitive revelation was transmitted exteriorly by the organ of a magisterium essentially fallible. God contented Himself with inwardly enlightening each particular soul by hidden inspirations. But under this regime the dangers besetting the work of salvation outweighed its advances. Then God raised up men whose mission was not merely to recall the content of the primitive revelation, but also to make it more explicit and more precise as time went on. These were the prophets. With them the principle of an exterior infallible teaching, first oral, then written, as a normal means of divine government, entered history for the first time. Thus, in the measure in which the work of salvation proceeds, the impor­ tance of a visible mediation appears more and more clearly. Immediation is a sign of inferiority, mediation a sign of perfection and of progress. Why this law, at once so general and so mysterious? The answer is not far to seek. Visible mediation does not mean that God relaxes His care for the governing of men ; it means on the contrary that His condescension begins to be more urgent, more helpful to a human nature wounded by sin. The moment it is introduced the immediate and direct solicitations of love, far from diminishing, become more abundant than ever. We may lay down the principle that for every outward promulgation of the law, there corres­ ponds an inward inpouring of grace. These things are clear enough to anyone who understands that the regime of visible mediation is, from its very inception, a sort of adumbration and luminous shadow of the mystery of the Incarnation. It remains true however that so long as this regime lasted, the visible mediation involved was still too imprecise to allow the act productive of the Church to bring with it the fullness of its effects of grace and truth: 1. Grace still came down directly from God to man. It did not pass through the humanity of Christ, so that it was not yet that rejoicing love which was to be concentrated first in the heart of the Word made flesh as the love with which the Father loved Christ, to overflow thence on all other men. Nor did it pass through the sacraments, which at this stage merely signified it but did not cause it: hence it still lacked the virtue and riches of those sacramental graces by which Christ was to establish His Church in its perfect state. 2. Moreover, supernatural truth, in the absence of a fully developed visible mediation, was neither completely revealed nor perfectly preserved. Hence the first regime of the Church in its various realizations under the natural or the legal state, represents only a preparatory phase of the act productive of the Church. 5 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE 3. THE EXISTING REGIME OF THE CHURCH It was only when God, inaugurating the final era of history, chose to pour out at last upon men the supreme favours reserved for them from all eternity, that He established the Church in its definitive temporal status by bringing the regime of visible mediation to its highest point of perfection. This brought with it at once the deepest joy and the most effective help, but also the hardest trial and the most exacting exercise of our faith: the greatest joy and help, because there is nothing so connatural to man as to receive divine things humanly;1 the hardest trial and effort, because there is no more surprising mystery than this collaboration of the uncreated with the created, of omnipotence with indigence, of eternity with time, of immensity with place. First the Word is sent from heaven into our flesh, and then, having promised the help of the Spirit, He sends His own disciples into the world: “As the Father hath sent me, so also I send you” (John xx. 21). Hence the perfect regime of the Church militant involves a double visible mediation : that of the Incarnation and that of the hierarchy. A. The Mediation of the Incarnation The first and principal mediation is that of the human nature of Christ which from the moment of the Incarnation became the organ of the Divinity,3 the instrument by which the divine action3 is to fill the world with the good things of grace. Henceforth, all gifts that come down to us from the abyss of the Deity first pass into the heart of Christ; it is of His fullness that all men— and even angels, as we have seen—receive. But how then can the human nature of Christ, which is finite and circumscribed by reason of the body, extend its influence over all men in the world, and even to the angels? Just as an instrument can produce, in virtue of the principal agent, an effect that surpasses its own powers and bears the stamp of the principal agent, so the created nature of Christ, by becoming the instrument of the divine immensity, can overleap its natural boundaries and receive a virtue beyond all limits.4 And it is precisely because Christ is able to pour the rays of His charity upon 1 To receive divine things by the ministry of men is connatural to man, in itself and essentially. It can become accidentally a great trial—think for example of a people conquered in an unjust war, to whom the Gospel is brought by their conquerors. But God can stir up heroism on cither side, and draw some good out of the evil, perhaps even here on earth. 1 “ The flesh senes as the organ of the Deity ” (St. John Damascene, De Fide Orthodoxa, lib. Ill, cap. xv; P.G. XCIV, col. 1060). “ Humana natura in Christo erat velut quoddam organum divinitatis ” (St Thomas, De Veritate, q. 27, a. 4). * “ Humana natura est instrumentum divine actionis ” (St. Thomas, III, q. 43, a. 2). 4The Passion of Chnst, remarks St. Thomas, being corporeal, cannot touch all men; but by reason of the Divinity united to it, it possesses a spiritual virtue and acts by spiritual contact (III, q. 48, a. 6, ad 2). The Salman licenses were to say that although bodily contact with Christ is desirable (connaturalis) it is not necessarily required (essentialis) to produce a physical causality; a spiritual contact suffices (De Incarnatione, disp. 23, dub. 4, nos. 37 and 38). 6 THE SUCCESSIVE REGIMES OF THE CHURCH all men without exception, because He can knock at the door of every soul, and play a part in the inner drama of each individual conscience, that God has made Him the absolutely universal instrument for the sanctification of the world to the exclusion of all others, so that, since His coming, no saving grace is ever given apart from Him. Hence it is that divine grace—now rightfully called the grace of Christ not only because it was merited by His charity and sufferings, but also because it passes through His heart before reaching us—brings with it new privileges. For it delivers men for the first time from the penalty of original sin, opening the gates of heaven for them without further delay. That could not be said of the grace given by anticipation to the just men of the Old Law.1 Grace moreover, while of its own nature it divinizes men, does this now by “christening” them, that is to say by working to conform their lives more and more to that of Christ. It is true that the human nature of Christ acts as an organ of the Divinity and that, in a general way, effects resemble their principal cause rather than the instrument; but the human nature of Christ, being henceforth united to the Person of the Word as a human hand is united to a human person, possesses all the fullness of the life that it pours out on other men. It became on this account a privileged instrument, speciale divinitatis instrumentum,2 causing our salvation “as by its own proper virtue”,3 not by a virtue transmitted as a “separated” instrument does, and as a minister, even a sinful minister, can do. That is why it was that from the Incarnation onwards, more than in earlier times, grace tended to draw men to God by conforming them to Christ.4 B. The Mediation of the Hierarchy The second visible mediation, wholly subordinate to the first, is the mediation of the hierarchy. I. THE TRUE EXPLANATION i. Christ, in the course of His temporal life, could, as physical instrument of the divine power, act in two different ways: either from a distance, or by sensible contact. 1 cf. St. Thomas, III, q. 49, a. 5, ad 1 ; q. 52, a. 5, ad 2, and a. 8, ad 3. ’ St. Thomas, De Vaitate, q. 29, a. 5. * “ Christus autem operatus est nostram salutem quasi ex propria virtute, et ideo oportuit quod in eo esset gratiae plenitudo’’ (ibid., ad 3). Cf. John of St. Thomas, III, q. 8; disp, to, a. t, no. 45, vol. VIII, p. 260. Further on John of St. Thomas explains that the grace of Christ, being of the same species as ours, is of itself incapable of causing ours physically: it is by reason of Christ in whom it is found, and because it serves as an instrument of the divine virtue, that it can become the cause of our own grace. Hence it follows that Christ as man is the instrumental physical cause, but not a second physical cause, of our grace. (Ill, q. 13; disp. 15, a. 4, no. 45; vol. VIII, p. 460.) 4 “ The Son of God wished to bring others into conformity with His filiation, so as not only to be Son but also the Elder of many sons. Hence He who is, by an eternal generation, the OnlyBegotten, is, by the transmission of grace, the First-Bom of many brothers ” (St. Thomas, Comm, ad Ram., cap. viii, lect. 6). 7 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE I This can be seen in the case of the bodily cures. When the Jewish official begs Him to come down to Capharnaum where his son lies dying, Christ sends him back comforted, and straightway the child is healed (John iv. 46-54). When the centurion expressly asks that his servant may be healed by a single word spoken from afar, his prayer too is heard (Matt. viii. 5-13). When the Syrophoenician woman goes home she sees her child already freed from the devil (Mark vii. 29-30); and when the ten lepers arc on the way to show themselves to the priests they find themselves suddenly cleansed (Luke xvii. 14). The cures however are, for the most part, wrought in a more direct way, by bodily contact. Our Lord touches a leper in Galilee (Mark i. 41) ; He spits on the eyes of a blind man at Bethsaida and lays hands on him twice (Mark viii. 23-25); He touches the eyes of two blind men at Capharnaum (Matt. Lx. 29); and again at Jericho (Matt. xx. 34) ; He allows the woman with the issue of blood to touch the hem of His garment (Luke viii. 44); He takes Jairus’ daughter by the hand (Luke viii. 54) ; He touches the bier on which a dead youth is carried (Luke vii. 14); He makes them take away the stone which separates Him from Lazarus (John xi. 39), and so on. Further, Jesus seems to go out of His way, at one time to insist on the value of this sensible contact (as when He puts His fingers into the ears of the deaf-mute to signify that He is going to open them, and moistens his tongue to signify that He will unloose it (Mark vii. 33)) ; at another, to make His virtue pass by poor and altogether disproportionate material means (as when He puts clay on the eyes of the blind man of Siloc (John ix. 6)) ; and again, to extend its range by the use of words (as when He commands the paralytic to rise (Mark ii. 11), or Lazarus to come forth (John xi. 43)). Why, finally, did He deliberately prolong an absence without which Lazarus need not have died (John xi. 21 and 32), if not to help us to realize the virtue of His bodily presence? These bodily cures are, above all, the symbols of spiritual ones. As soon as Jesus appeared, His heart radiated grace to illumine the world from afar. It was from afar that He knew Nathanael under the fig-tree (John i. 48-50), and His glance travels yet farther to all the true adorers in spirit and in truth (Johniv. 23), and all the sheep not yet in the fold of Israel (John x. 16). But He acted in a still more marvellous manner on those who approached Him; He slaked their thirst: “If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink” (John vii. 37); He comforted them: “Come to me all ye that labour and arc burdened, and I will refresh you” (Matt. xi. 28) ; He absolved them : “. . . but she with ointment hath anointed my feet. Wherefore I say to thee: Many sins are forgiven her, because she hath loved much” (Luke vii. 46-47) ; He touched their hearts with penitence: “And the Lord, turning, looked on Peter. And Peter remembered . . . and going out wept bitterly ” (Luke xxii. 61); He put new heart into them: “Was not our heart burning within us, whilst he spoke in the way?” (Luke xxiv. 32); He met their love with love: “Now there was leaning on Jesus’ bosom one of his disciples whom Jesus loved ” (John xiii. 23). Here too we shall see Him use the spoken 8 THE SUCCESSIVE REGIMES OF THE CHURCH word to enlarge the field of this sanctifying contact. A word casts out the unclean spirit in the synagogue of Capharnaum (Mark i. 25), and among the Gerascncs (Mark v. 8), and takes away the sins of the paralytic (Mark ii. 5), and cleanses the adulteress (John viii. 11). It thus appears that in the days of His mortal life Jesus acted in two ways: He scattered His graces far and wide, and that is action from a distance; and He communicated them in a more intimate manner to those whom He could touch, and that is action by contact. Certainly such contact is no indispensable means to His action; but it is His connatural means, the means to which He draws our attention, and for which He takes care to provide all possible opportunity by moving about through Galilee, Samaria, Judea, Decapolis and even to Phoenicia. And if we want the ultimate reason for this procedure we must seek it not merely in the principle (still too general) that direct contact between agent and patient favours the full efficiency of physical action (for when it comes from God through the heart of Christ, physical action can be perfect even at a distance), but above all in the fact, much more immediate, that inasmuch as our nature is wounded, it stands in need of a sensible stimulus to awaken it connaturally to the life of grace.1 And that explains why the perfection of heaven, where man will be glorified, will not be incompatible with Christ’s action from a distance; whereas the perfection of earth, where man remains wounded, requires the action of Christ by sensible contact.2 2. Jesus has now been “taken up into heaven”, He “sits on the right hand of God” (Mark xvi. 19), and is fully associated with His Father’s power. Is His action to be restricted, from now onwards, to action from a distance? Is this the end of His action by contact? No: for before He left us He willed that there should always be among us certain men invested with divine powers, by whom the action that He initiates from heaven may be sensibly conveyed to each of us and may continue to reach us in the only way con­ natural to us—through direct contact. These are the hierarchic powers. Far from being substituted for Christ’s action they are subordinated to it so as to carry it, in some sort, through space and time: like those mists left behind by the rain which continue to refresh the earth when the rain has ceased, they come to birth from the mystery of the Incarnation to perpetuate 1 Schcebcn considers that the purpose of sacramentality is less to overcome our wounds and weakness than to initiate a more sublime economy of salvation. We hold, without doubt, that the grace of Christ given us by the sacraments is better than the grace of Adam; so far, Schccben’s views arc to be retained. But we must not forget that the sacraments—differing herein from the Incarnation—will pass away, and do not belong to the economy of the glorified Church (cf. M. J. Schcebcn, Die Mysterien des Christentums, Fribourg-im-B. 1865, ch. VII, no. 81, p. 541). 1 Direct contact of agent and patient may be said to be connatural by reason of the generic exigencies of physical action : for which reason the Salmanticcnscs, in a passage cited above, note that it is needed “ connaturally ”, not ” essentially ”, in view of a “ natural ” but not an “ essential ” condition (De Incarnatione, disp. 23, dub. 4, nos. 37 and 40). But this contact may be called connatural in another way, namely on account of the particular condition of the patient z to men wounded by the first sin only action by sensible contact can bring grace connaturally. St. Thomas teaches this view when considering the suitability of the Incarnation and of the sacraments. Cf. Ill, q. 1, a. 2; q. 61, a. i. 9 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE its blessings among us.1 These powers are essentially ministerial, that is to say, transmitters; they would be without effect if the divine power, passing into the heart of Christ, did not perpetually come to touch them into life. They com­ prise two kinds of powers: the jurisdictional power, transmitting truth, and the sacramental power, transmitting grace.s Our Lord Himself announced, prepared and instituted them while He was still visible in our midst: He first sent the twelve .Apostles into Galilee (Luke Lx. i), then the seventy-two dis­ ciples into Judea (Luke x. r), and finally the “Eleven” with a mission to teach all nations until the consummation of the world (Matt, xxviii. 16-20). He baptized, or had baptized, all who came to Him (John iii. 22; iv. 2)’ and He willed that after His ascension all nations should be baptized (Matt, xxviii. 16-20). And we have a sign, at once mysterious and manifest, that in these hierarchic powers He seeks to establish sensible contact with us. It appears in this, that the end of the highest of these powers, the power of order, is to give us His very presence itself, real and corporeal, under the sacramental veils. Doubtless God could have saved us without becoming incarnate. Probably even in that case He would have established a visible hierarchy—an opinion that finds support in reasons of a general order, such as the fact that provi­ dence habitually rules lower things through higher. Such general reasons cannot content us when others, more precise and immediate, are at hand. We know that it was the desire to come into immediate touch with us that led God to become incarnate. And we know that Christ, after a short time in this world, was taken up into heaven where He sits at the right hand of the Father. How then can sensible contact between Him and ourselves be maintained? There is only one solution: namely that Christ, when about to leave the earth, founded here a visible hierarchy, assisted by Himself, directed by Himself, a hierarchy which, living in our midst, could serve as His instru­ ment in establishing contact with us. He continues then to make contact with us by His action, but under the appearances of the hierarchy; as, in the greatest of the sacraments, He continues to make contact with us by His substance under the appearances of bread and wine. Such is the direct and immediate explanation of the institution of the Christian hierarchy. 2. FALSE EXPLANATIONS To those who seek an explanation of the origin of the hierarchy but fail to rise to this level, it can hardly appear to be more than the product of a 1 Prologue to the fourth book of the Sentences io Anmbald. This was really written by a Dominican of that name, a friend and disciple of St. Thomas. Cf. Père Mandonnet, O.P., Des écrits authentiques de saint Thomas (ΓAquin, Fribourg 1910, p. 153. 1 It is true that there is no need for the presence of the hierarchic powers in the ministers of Baptism and of Matrimony, and that is why these two sacraments continue to exist in Protes­ tantism. And yet these sacraments arc connected with the hierarchy by numerous links and that is why, in Protestantism, their validity remains, in spite of everything, precarious. > This, for St. Augustine, was already the Baptism of the New Law. For St.John Chrysostom it was fundamentally no more than the baptism ofJohn. Cf. NL-J. Lagrange, EzançiU selon saint Jean, Paris X925, p. 91. St. Thomas follows St. Augustine (III, q. 66, a. 2): not however without hesita­ ting (III, q. 73, a. 5, ad 4). THE SUCCESSIVE REGIMES OF THE CHURCH process of human sclf-divinization. We may here recall Chestov’s reflections on what he calls the “power of the keys”. In this he sees a hand uplifted against the transcendence of God, a progressive attempt at a hellenization of the biblical revelation. For Chcstov, Socrates was the first who clearly enunciated the formidable idea that the keys of heaven are on earth, at the disposal of men. The Christians tore this power from the hands of the idolaters, and to-day it is the scientific spirit that makes bold to grasp it. “Scratch a modern European, and whether he be positivist or materialist you soon discover under his skin the old medieval Catholic, convinced of his exclusive right to open the gates of heaven ... If God Himself came to tell us that the potestas clavium belonged to Him alone the mildest of us would revolt. ”x We may find a very similar idea on the significance of our ecclesi­ astical hierarchy in Karl Barth. At the bottom of the outlook of these thinkers there lies a fatal miscon­ ception of the relations between God and man. They suppose that if God conferred some of His powers on man He would have to resign these powers Himself; that what man possesses ministerially as instrumental cause, God must cease to possess sovereignly as First Cause; that there is, in a word, a concurrence or conflict between the potestas of the Creator and the potestas of His creatures, so that something given to them is something taken from Him. In such an hypothesis, it is evident that the salvific powers—but also all powers in general, even down to the act of existence itself—cannot belong both to God and to man; we must choose whether we shall attribute them to God or to man. Those who reason thus are the victims of an univocal metaphysic. We do not attribute one and the same power of the keys both to God and to His ministers. The notion of the power of the keys is proportional, analogical. There are the keys of authority {clavis auctoritatis) which are the prerogative of the Holy Trinity; the key's of excellence {clavis excellentiae) which are proper to Christ, in that His human nature is the organ of the Divinity; and finally the keys of the ministry {clavis ministerii)2 which alone are communicated to the Church and subsist in dependence on the two foregoing as if suspended from them. The first keys contain the second, and the second the third, as the ocean contains all its currents. It is a metaphysical error which falsifies in advance all attempts at exegesis, to imagine that the divine power cannot communicate itself to men by contact without losing something of itself in the process, that it ceases to be sovereign master of the goods it bestows. That the hierarchic powers, along with the created subjects in which they reside, remain in uninterrupted dependence on the divine power, is asserted by the author of the Imitation of Christ. Expressing the common doctrine on the most sublime and mysterious of these powers, that of consecrating the Body and Blood of the Saviour, he writes: “The priest is God’s minister, using God’s word, by God’s own command and institution; but it is God who 1 Léon Chcstov, Les relations de la mort, preface by Boris de Schloezer, Paris 1923, p. xlvi. ’St. Thomas, IV Sent., dist. 18, q. 1, a. 1, quacst. r. I I Λ y - THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE is here the principal Author and invisible Operator, to whom is subject all that He wills, and who is obeyed in all that He commands.”1 3- 1 ¥ * * THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE HIERARCHIC ACTION The virtue coming from God through contact with a visible hierarchy— which therefore might be called “hierarchic virtue” or, again, “apostolic virtue”—will have for its proper effect the formation of the Church. It will bear the marks of its double origin, divine and visible. And that is why it will possess characteristics apparently opposed; for instance, it will be perfect, but yet will call for completion; it wall be universal, but yet in need of something to supply for it. It is perfect because it alone confers those sanctifying effects which are to bring the Church militant to her perfect historical age, to her ultimate specific form, which are to make her the completed Body of Christ, the community having Christ for Head and Christians for members, the marvellous abode in which God dwells somewhat as He dwells in Christ Himself. And yet it has need of completing graces over and above itself to prepare souls for it in the first place, and to perpetuate its effects. How, to start with, would the action of the hierarchy be welcomed by adults if they were not interiorly prepared by hidden influences coming from Christ without mediation to predispose them towards it, and continuing to stir them up afterwards to new' progress?* And since the hierarchy can only operate by individual acts, from time to time, in a way that is morally continuous of course, but yet physically discontinuous, how could its divine effects in souls—such as the sacramental character and sacramental grace, which nothing else could supply—be kept continuously in existence save by a continuous and secret influx? Certain gifts of plenitude, necessary for the constitution of the Church, could never be given to man without the contact of the hierarchy; but to ensure the acceptance of these gifts and their continuous persistence in time, requires the action of a power of completion, also coming from Christ, but without mediation and wholly invisibly. Furthermore, the hierarchic virtue is universal, since it is to extend to all nations and to endure for all time: “Going therefore teach ye all nations: baptizing them . . . and behold I am with you all days even to the con­ summation of the world” (Matt, xxviii. 19-20). But the hierarchy reaches men through sensible contact. Can such a contact be really universal? Undoubtedly it can. First of all de jure, because the hierarchy is the unique 1 Bk. IV, ch. v. 1 There are two ways in which one can be called :11 First, exteriorly by the mouth of the preacher: UWotti hath sent her maids to incite to the tower and the walls of the city [Prov. be. 3] ; thus God called Peter and Andrew [Matt. iv. 19]. The other calling is interior, and this is by way of a certain spiritual stirring, [‘ quidam mentis instinctus ’] by which God inclines the human heart towards the things of faith and of virtue: Who hath raised up the just one from the East and hath called him to follow him? [Isaias xli. 2 ( Vulg.)]. This second calling is indispensable, for our hearts would not turn to God if He did not draw us to Himself: Xo man can come to me except the Father, who hath sent me, draw him [John vi. 44]: Concert us, 0 Lord, to thee, and we shall be concerted [Lam. v. 2t]” (St. Thomas, Comm, in Rom., cap. VIII, lecL 6). 12 THE SUCCESSIVE REGIMES OF THE CHURCH visible instrument chosen by God to form His Church here below and com­ municate the fullness of grace and evangelical truth to the world; and de facto as well, for on the day of Pentecost the hierarchy established contact with a multitude of men of all condi dons, classes and tongues. Yet this factual universality of the hierarchy will be never fully achieved. Con­ ditions for preaching the Gospel can always become more favourable; there can always be a greater readiness to receive it, more active zeal to spread it abroad. To suppose that the universality of the hierarchy will one day reach its theoretical maximum, is to suppose it to make contact not only with each of the great categories of mankind, but also with each subordinate group contained in those categories. That, in fact, is the utmost perfection of universality which we have any right to expect of a visible and social instru­ ment of salvation. Even supposing it achieved, the hierarchy would not necessarily have made contact with each individual of each group; any individual might still be in invincible (non-culpable) ignorance of its divine character. Now we know on the other hand that God “will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (i Tim. ii. 4), and that no human person, no man endowed with reason and freedom, xvill ever be abandoned by Him; even though, by no fault of his own, he wholly misses or misconceives the hierarchy. Such a man, living beyond its reach, will at least be visited as from afar by hidden redemptive influences, and only one who knowingly rejects these express invitations will be definitively con­ demned. We have said: only the outpouring of grace that comes of visible contact with the hierarchy will enable the Church to attain to its final specific state and grow to the fullness of the Body of Christ in this world. But this outpouring, though plenary and universal in its order, calls for another, altogether spiritual and effected from a distance; an outpouring whose normal purpose it will be to complete the former, but whose extraordinary purpose it will also be in a certain measure to supply for it. Consequently, two influences from Christ are to be recognized. The first is exerted through contact with the hierarchy. It is perfect. It is universal both de jure and de facto, but still in a particular genus, in that way namely in which a hierarchy, a visible and social instrument of salvation, can be said to be universal, i.e. by reaching every class of men, not necessarily each man in each class, genera singulorum, non singula generum',1 let us call it if you will, “collective universality”. The second influence, action from a distance, is universal with the universality possible to a pure ray of the spirit: it enters freely into each human conscience, normally as completing, i.e., as disposing it to receive the hierarchical impulse and retain its effects; but exceptionally, when this latter is lacking, as supplying for it, and filling up in a measure what it lacks. This we may call “individual universality”. 1 cf. St. Thomas, I, q. 19, a. 6, ad 1 ; Comm, super I Tim., cap. ii, lect. 1 ; St. Augustine, Enchiridion de Fide, Spe et Caritate, cap. ciii, 27. THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE 4. ACTION’ FROM A DISTANCE AS SUPPLEMENTARY The divine power of Christ makes use exclusively of die contact of the hierarchy to constitute the Church in her last historical epoch, to give men the sacramental characters, the sacramental graces, and the right orientation of their thought and action. And yet the divine power of Christ is not con­ fined to the use of visible instruments.1 It can dispense with them. It sends into each human conscience from afar, if not the same gifts, at least the elementary grace of salvation. Of this action from a distance, in so far as it is called upon exceptionally to supply for action by contact, I must here say a few words. It will always be granted till the consummation of the world. For in this world there will always be men who, by no fault of their own, will live in ignorance or misconception of the hierarchy. They will not receive the graces that make them full members of the Church; yet none of them will be deprived, save by his own fault, of the grace of salvation. If they refuse this grace, they condemn themselves. If they are docile to it to the point of living in love, they are Christ’s sheep. They are not yet visibly united to the flock that Peter has to feed. They are sheep still scat­ tered, souls still in exile. But the grace that comes to their souls is, in itself, a grace bearing them towards the Church. It orientates all men secredy towards the one flock of Christ? It does not always succeed in bringing them in effectively. Many, by no fault of their own, may die without reaching the end of their journey. They are not yet, but nevertheless they can be, of the Church. They are not yet of her in any stable or definitive way, but they can be so in a precarious and provisional way; they are not yet wholly members in achieved act, re, but they can be so incompletely, in virtual act, vota-, they are not yet qualified to receive the efficient causal influence of the hierarchic powers, but they can be already en route—perhaps without knowing it, perhaps superficially against the grain—towards regions illuminated and fecundated by the hierarchical powers. So that in a sense there is really only one flock upon earth already, gathered together by Christ and for Christ, and entrusted by Christ to Peter—a flock to which many faithful belong consciously, openly, visibly, and many other faithful unconsciously, secredy and invisibly. 1 “ Licet autem effectus dependeat a prima causa, causa tamen supercxcedit effectum, nec dependet ab effectu. Et ideo praeter baptismum aquae potest aliquis consequi sacramenti effectum ex passione Christi . . .” (St. Thomas, III, q. 66, a. 11). ’* Deus . . . cujus potentia sacramentis visibilibus non alligatur ” (ibid., q. 68, a. 2). 1 “ ‘And other sheep 1 have that are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold and one shepherd’ (John x. 16). The sheep in Israel, leaving their ancient fold, will join with the Gentile sheep and there will be but one flock and one shepherd. In St. John’s text the word ‘ bring ’ docs not mean * take them to the fold ’ (/rrduccre, adducere), but ‘ lead them like a flock.' The essential thing in the parable is not ‘ to be in the fold ’ but * to be led by’ the true Shepherd ’ ” (M.-J. Lagrange, O.P., Écangile selon Saint Jean, 1925, p. 281). Literally, then, it is not a question of a single fold, but of a single flock. All the sheep that are led by the true Shepherd tend to make up a single flock; and that is what matters. - y THE SUCCESSIVE REGIMES OF THE CHURCH 4. THE FUTURE REGIME OF THE CHURCH The visible mission of the Word, on the day of the Incarnation, gave the Church Christ for Head; the visible mission of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost gave her the faithful for body; with these missions, the Church entered on her definitive economy. What was inaugurated at that time— which the Apostles insistently called “the last days” (Hcb. i. 2) and “the last times” (1 Peter i. 20)—was destined to endure for eternity. For indeed all the riches that God had reserved for us in His heart since the beginning of the world were then really given us. In this world we possess them only under veils and in a nature still gravely injured by sin. But later, when all veils are tom away, we shall possess them fully and openly, in a nature glorified and transfigured. Thus, even in the definitive economy of the Church, we have to distinguish two successive regimes: the regime of earth and the regime of heaven. The beatifying vision and love of the angels and of the elect plunge them directly and immediately into the very Godhead Itself. The strength by which they know God as He knows Himself and love Him as He loves Himself still comes to them mediately, by way of the human nature of Christ, the eternal King of men and angels; but in heaven, with all our weaknesses healed,1 the difference between action by contact and action from a distance is of no great importance. The one will penetrate us with the same case and the same connaturality as the other. The visible hierarchy will not then be needed any more. Its whole purpose was to continue that sensible contact by which Christ touched our wounds to heal them. That is why the Fathers and Doctors of the Church were so fond of presenting the mediation of the hierarchy in the light of a remedy. It had no raison d'être in the state of original justice.2 It will have less still in the state of glorified nature: “When the consummation is come the use of sacraments will cease; for the blessed in celestial glory have no longer any need of the sacramental remedy. They endlessly rejoice in the presence of God, contemplating His glory face to face and, transformed from brightness to brightness in the abyss of Deity, they taste the Word of God made flesh as He was in the beginning and will be for ever.”3 1 Even in a state of pure nature, and so abstracting from any injuries resulting from sin, action by contact would be better than action at a distance. For, as St. Thomas remarks (III, q. 6t, a. 1), it is consonant with human nature to avail itself of corporeal and sensible things to attain to the spiritual and the intelligible. But the state of pure nature has never existed. On the other hand there is no longer any special privilege attached to action by contact cither in the state of innocence or the state of glory. In fact, therefore, it keeps this special privilege only for the state of nature injured and healed. 1 St. Thomas, who made so profound an analysis of the state of original justice, went so far as to think that man had then no need of sacraments “ not only inasmuch as their end is to provide a remedy for sin, but also inasmuch as their end is to perfect the soul ” (III, q. Gt, a. 2). ’ De Imitatione Christi, lib. IV, cap. 2. 4 Î Chapter II THE APOSTOLIC HIERARCHY I. THE FUNCTION OF THE APOSTOLIC HIERARCHY From the beginning of the Christian revelation to the present day the Church appears as suspended from God by the visible chain of a hierarchy. This is a mystery that at once raises certain questions. i. THE CHAIS OF APOSTOL1CIT1' As the Father hath sent me I also send you ...” (John xx. 21). “What­ soever you shall bind upon earth shall be bound also in heaven ...” (Matt, xviii. 18). “All power is given me in heaven and in earth. Going therefore teach ye all nations, baptizing them . . . 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 ” (Matt, xxviii. 18-20). The Father, Christ, the apostolic body composed of Peter and the other Apostles, the people—these are the Enks of a chain proclaimed by the whole Gospel.1 An impulse of extraordinary power began, at the opening of our era, to work for the salvation of men ; it comes down to them by steps, passing first into Christ (now hidden from us by the luminous cloud of the Ascension), then from Christ into the apostolic body2 which is to endure till the end of the world, to teach and baptize all peoples. This extraordinary energy issuing from God, made manifest in Christ, continues operative in the apostolic body (for though its members, as individuals, are constantly replaced, it subsists like a unique living thing from generation to generation). It may be called the virtue of apostolicity, and is the proper cause of the Church, as fire is the proper cause of heat. It is always in act, forming in this world what St. Paul calls the Body of Christ. The Church, in the proper sense of that word, can come to birth and flourish only where the Blessed Trinity, through Our Lord and through the apostolic body, touches our 1 This is the chain of causes in actual present dependence. But die apostolic body will also renew itself from generation to generation, and this wall be the chain of sequence in time, or of the apostolic succession. 1 On Jesus’ w ords to the seventy-tw o disciples returning from their mission, “ I saw Satan falling from tycaven like lightning,” Père Lagrange, O.P., notes: “ Nothing more forcibly expresses Jesus’ intention to carry out His redemptive work through those whom He invested with His authority. The Church, along with her hierarchy, rests on this intention.” Évangile selon saint Lucy Paris 1921, p. 3θ2. 16 * ■ Ι·Γ ίί··ι THE APOSTOLIC HIERARCHY earth; that, presumably, is what we mean when we call her apostolic.1 The religion of the Gospel in not egalitarian but apostolic; it is not a religion without intermediaries, but hierarchic. 2. WHY A HIERARCHY? Here certainly is a great mystery. God could be the sole Actor if He wished. He was under no necessity to mingle human nature, always circum­ scribed, almost always sinful, with the work of the sanctification of the world. He fully foresaw that in having recourse to the ministry of men He would be only too often ill-served, and would provide some with arguments against His goodness. “What!” said Rousseau. “Always these human witnesses, always men who report what other men have reported, always men between God and myself!”2 And indeed it is true that between God and myself I encounter human nature at every turn, first that of Christ sent by the Father, and then that of the Apostles and their successors sent by Christ.3 Why? I. The first answer derives from a general principle which would apply, proportionately, to every form of divine government, whether of the world of nature or the world of grace. Though the very least beings in the universe arc directly present to Him, God has chosen nevertheless to rule them by a chain of created intermediaries; below the First Cause there are genuine 1 Because its proper cause is a hierarchy invested for all time with the power conferred on the Apostles by' Christ, die Church is called apostolic. Apostolicity, thus considered, marks the depen­ dence of the Church as found in all the faithful, of the Church believing and loving, on its divine causes. Apostolicity belongs to her ratione causalitatis, secundum paseitatem quarti modi. 1 Profession de foi du vicaire savoyard. 1 To deny the mediation of the apostolic body without denying that of Christ, violates the organic order of salvation none the less. To invoke the text of St. Paul: “ There is one God: and one Mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a redemption for all ” (t Tim. ii, 5), merely complicates the error with a textual misreading. The second chapter of this Epistle to Timothy opens with a discourse on prayer. St. Paul first indicates its forms: “ I desire therefore first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions and thanksgivings be made . . (v. 1); then its beneficiaries: “ for all men, for kings, for all that are in high station that we may lead a quiet and pcacable life in all piety and chastity" (w. 1—2); and then its motives, which are drawn cither from its very nature: “ For this is good " (v. 3); or from God’s desire for the same: “ and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour, who will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth ’’ (w. 3-4). St. Paul establishes that God walls the salvation of all men, Jews and Gentiles alike, by three considerations. The first is drawn from the fact that God is God over all, over Jew and Gentile together: “ There is one God ” (v. 5: cf. Rom. iii, 29). The second is drawn from the universality of Christ’s mediation: “ and one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a redemption for all ” (w. 5-6). The third is taken from the mediation of Paul himself, by whom Christ's redemption is brought to the Gentiles: “ Whereto I jm appointed a preacher and an aposde (1 say the truth, I lie not), a doctor of the gentiles in faith and truth ” (w. G—7). This text, correctly analysed, proves therefore once more that salvation rpmes down by suc­ cessive steps: God, then the human nature of Christ, then Paul, then the QçntÜe pçoplcs. Paul knows that death is near (2 Tim. iv. 6j ; he has laid his hands upon Timothy (2 Tim» ί» 5), who is to keep safe what has been entrusted to him (j Tim. vi, 20), and to pass it on to trustworthy jmen fit to teach others also (2 Tim. ii. 2), on whom in turn he is to impose hands (1 Tim. v. 22), The Epistles to Timothy and Titus tell so strongly in favour of the apostolic hierarchy that liberal* JProtatantism has been driven to deny their authenticity. THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE secondary causes. God has chosen to endow creatures not only with being and the perfection by which they exist, but also with causative virtue and the perfection by which they act.1 Thus lower things are ruled by higher and these again by higher still. Order is always bom of subordination. On the plane of nature children depend on parents, families depend on political governments, whose form is doubtless optional but whose existence is indispensable. This same general principle holds on the plane of grace: “For all things are yours, whether it be Paul, or Apollo, or Cephas,2 or the world, or life, or death, or tilings present or things to come; for all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s” (i Cor. iii. 21-23). From this standpoint one of the highest ends of the hierarchy is to provoke the exercise of charity. This is the truth that God showed St. Catherine of Siena: “I could easily have created men possessed of all that they should need both for body and soul, but I chose that they should have need of each other, and should be my ministers to administer the graces and gifts that they have received from me. Whether a man wall or no he cannot help making an act of love. It is true however that that act, unless made through love of me, profits him nothing as far as grace is concerned. See then that I have made men my ministers, and placed them in diverse stations and various ranks, in order that they may make use of the virtue of love. Wherefore, I show you that in my house are many mansions, and that I wish for no other thing than love.”3 There is light enough in those few lines of the dyer’s ' daughter to dissipate all the paradoxes of the Savoyard Vicar. 2. So much for the general principle of hierarchy in relation to all created things. For the Church we can, as we have seen, explain the need for a hierarchy in a more precise and immediate way. God became incarnate and entered into sense contact with men; but Christ, after some years on earth, ascended to the right hand of the Father in heaven; how was that sensible contact, effected of old between Him and ourselves, to continue? Christ, about to quit the world, left behind Him a visible hierarchy which thence­ forth He was to use as an instrument for establishing contact with us. 5. THE WORK OF THE DISCIPLES MORE WONDERFUL, IN A WAT, THAN THAT OF JESUS It is easy to see that Jesus’ most pressing care, after founding the Kingdom of God, was not to set about expanding it Himself, but to form those who would work for its expansion. As death approached He set His face towards Jerusalem and seemed little by little to concentrate His attention first on the Apostles, then on three of them, and then on the foremost of these three. ? Cf. St. Thomas, I, q. 103, a. 6: “ Utrum omnia immediate gubernentur a Deo.” 1 If authority is a service, then Paul who planted, Apollo who watered, and Cephas arc all in a sense the servants of the Corinthians: ” For we preach not ourselves, but Jesus Christ our Lord: and ourselves your servants through Jesus ” (2 Cor. iv. 5). ’ The Dialogue of St. Catherine of Siena, trans. A. Thorold, London, 1925, p. 16. l8 THE APOSTOLIC HIERARCHY It was to be their task in return, when they were confirmed, to be His witnesses “in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts i. 8). The book of the Acts is the history of this conquest of the world by the Apostles under the action of the Holy Spirit. Though the Magi came to His cradle, Jesus was later to declare that He Himself was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matt. xv. 24); so that it was for Peter, after the vision at Joppa, to open the gates of the Church to the Gentiles (Acts x), and for Paul to make them aware of the mystery of their aggregation to Christ (Eph. iii. 6). Thus the Apostles were to do greater things externally than Jesus; but they did them in virtue of His continuing assistance. “He that believeth in me, the works that I do he also shall do, and greater than these shall he do: because I go to the Father” (John xiv. 12). Never perhaps has the rôle of the inter­ mediaries in the religion of Jesus been more highly exalted than in this text.1 It was to be through them that Jesus would conquer the world: “I have sent you to reap that in which you did not labour: others have laboured, and you have entered into their labours” (John iv. 38). R rs uslj J ■V < I 1 'Ul· Η • < 11 4. RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE HIERARCHY “I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do” (John xvii. 4). What priest on his death-bed, calling to memory these words of Jesus to His Father for the last time, would dare to repeat them without feeling judged by them and indeed without feeling shaken to the depths of his soul by the vision of the evil occasioned by the negligences and errors of his life? He knows, to be sure, that God, by secret and unlooked-for illuminations, offers every' soul His love, and that none of the lost xviH complain at the day of judgment that their fate is no fault of their own. But he knows also that if he had imitated the Curé of Ars, even very inadequately, a flood of grace would have been poured out over souls on his account and would have sanctified them by thousands. The thought could become so oppressive that only a special mercy would save him from despair. And, given that the body of the faithful as a whole, in so far as it puts the gifts it has received into act, is the cause of the life and radiance of the Church, every' Catholic conscious of the mission which has lain upon him since Baptism and Confirmation, might well feel the like anguish. St. 1 The “ greater works ” here in question are not merely miracles, but the diffusion of Chris­ tianity throughout the world. Though he was too hostile to the supernatural to accept the Fourth Gospel, Loisy at least saw the meaning of this passage very clearly. “ The birth, development, and entire life of the Church arc here presented,” he says, “ as something to follow the Gospel and surpass it. Fundamentally, these arc not distinct works and it will always be Christ who acts; while He lived with His disciples His activity was limited by die physical conditions and the provi­ dential necessities of His rôle with regard to the Jews. It will no longer be so when He has entered into His glory, and diat is why the work of His disciples was to be more marvellous dian His own (Zz Quatrième Évangile, 1903, Ρ· 749)· 19 Wfî* η THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE Catherine of Siena, Iamb without spot, broken by unheard-of penances, accused herself with tears, while she lay dying, of all the disorders which then disfigured Christendom. And with reason; for it is natural that the faith, which involves acceptance of Christ’s words on the mediation of weak men and thus lays unlimited responsibilities upon us, should thereby also give us a glimpse of the incal­ culable and disquieting consequences of a single one of our shortcomings. 5. THE HIERARCHY AS MYSTERY AND AS MIRACLE When the divine virtue passed through the human nature of Christ to bring grace and truth to the sinners among whom He lived, then, although it remained essentially mysterious, it embodied itself in space and time, and became in a measure manifest, on account of the visible means it borrowed. Thus too, the same mysterious virtue by which to-day the Church is formed in the world, having come from its source in the Trinity and passed through the human nature of Our Lord now glorified and ascended to heaven, continues, by passing through the hierarchy, to incarnate itself in space and time and to make itself in a measure visible, by reason of the means whereby it enters into sensible contact with us. It is thus invisible and mysterious in its inner depths, but visible and evident up to a point in virtue of the sensible vesture with which it clothes itself in order to reach us. We need no faith to perceive the sacramental signs and the jurisdictional organization of the Church. Faith will be needed, however, to recognize that these signs and this organization are the envelope of a hidden, divine and cver-active virtue, without which the very being and existence of the Church would soon founder into nothingness. That is the mystery we confess when we say, in the words of the Nicaco-Constantinopolitan Creed: “I believe in the apostolic Church.” We believe—it is a truth of faith revealed in Scripture—that a supernatural virtue penetrates the hierarchy, the apostolic body, for the forming of the Body of Christ in the world. Yet, however mysterious in itself, the divine virtue that forms and main­ tains the Church is revealed, inadequately no doubt, in one of its effects: the marvellous permanence of the Church. To anyone who is alive to the impermanence and fragility of all known societies, the uninterrupted sub­ stantial continuity of the Church, in the midst of the revolutions of the Western world, must surely seem a sociological fact for which no natural explanation will suffice. The permanence of the Church under one same hierarchy is not a mystery to be seen only by the eye of faith; it is a fact verifiable in history; and its miraculous character bears witness to the divine origin of the Church. In this sense Bossuet could write: “Besides the advan­ tage which the Church of Jesus Christ alone possesses in being founded on miraculous and divine facts openly proclaimed without fear of contradiction at the very’ time when they happened, here, for those who live in later times, 20 1 THE APOSTOLIC HIERARCHY we have a permanent miracle confirming the truth of all the others: the persistence of a religion consistently victorious over all the errors that attempt to destroy it.”1 The hierarchy is mysterious and, as such, an object of faith, in so far as it is a dispenser of divine grace and truth, and in so far as it is the instrumental cause of the Body of Christ which is the Church. But it is also miraculous, and, as such, observable, inasmuch as in the turmoil and confusion of the world it communicates a constancy, a persistence, to all that we can see of the Church—a constancy of doctrine and of practice which the laws that preside over the evolution of human societies cannot sufficiently explain. II. THE TWO POWERS OF THE APOSTOLIC HIERARCHY The apostolic hierarchy divides into two great powers, the power of order and the power of jurisdiction. We must examine the basis of this division, and the nature of both powers. r. THE BASIS OF THE DIVISION OF THE TWO HIERARCHIC PO WERS Christ is “the head of the body, the Church” (Col. i. 18). God has made Him “head over all the Church, which is his body” (Eph. i. 22-23). “Christ is the head of the Church, the Saviour of his body” (Eph. v. 23). In this comparison of head and body St. Paul indicates the whole mystery of the action of Christ on His Church. The Word takes flesh and becomes the Head of the Church. He acts on her in two ways. First, by a hidden influx from within, He communicates the life of grace. And again He teaches her, from without, by words that reach the mind through the ear, the ways of truth. Thus, by a two-fold contact, the one, more mysterious, pouring out grace, the other, more external, showing her the truth, Christ saves the Church which is His Body. That is why He appeared to the Apos des “full of grace and truth” (John i. 14); Moses had brought only the Law, but “by Jesus Christ”, by contact with Him, “came grace and truth” (John i. 17). He is Priest, full of grace, and King, full of truth. Now the Lord Jesus, says St. Mark (xvi. 19), “was taken up into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God”; He is, says St. Matthew (xxvi. 64), “sitting on the right hand of die power of God”; Stephen saw Him “stand­ ing on the right hand of God” (Acts vii. 55). He is thus associated with the divine omnipotence in the work of directing and sustaining His Church. How then does He sustain, and how direct her? He willed to form her by the double contact of His sanedfying influx and His living teaching. Does it then follow that in order to conserve her He will act on her only from a distance? He willed first to be united to her as head 1 Discours sur Γhistoire universelle, pt. II, ch. xxx, 21 £ ■ THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE to body: must we believe that on the day of the Ascension the Head was, as it were, taken from the Body? No. The glorified Christ who is in heaven remains closely united to the crucified body of His Church. He touches it, no longer through the contact of His own proper Person, save in the Eucharist, but through the persons of the hierarchy who have given themselves to be used by Him: for by this, explains the Apostle, we cleave to “ the head, from which the whole body, by joints and bands, being supplied with nourishment and compacted, groweth unto the increase of God ” (Col. ii. 19). If He has Himself appointed “some apostles, and some prophets, and other some evangelists, and other some pastors and doctors’’, it is “for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: until we all meet into the unity of faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ”, and so that “doing the truth in charity we may in all things grow up in him who is the head, even Christ: from whom the whole body, being compacted and fidy joined together, by what everyr joint supplieth, according to the operation in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in charity ” (Eph. iv. 11—16). From the twofold action of Christ comes the distinction of the two great hierarchic powers. The power of serving as instrument of Christ the Priest to perpetuate the redemptive sacrifice in the Mass and to communicate the fullness of Christian grace through the sacraments—this is the power of order.1 And the power of serving as instrument of Christ the King, so as to continue under His action to preach the fullness of Christian truth to the world—this is the power of jurisdiction, the pastoral power,2 the authority to teach what is to be believed and what done. The end of the power of order is to convey to all ages in a hidden manner the drama of the Redemption and its fruits. The end of the power of juris­ diction, understood here in the broadest sense as covering both the extra­ ordinary authority of the Apostles and the regular authority of their suc­ cessors, is to prolong Christ’s witness to the truth by openly proclaiming to all ages the whole plenitude of Christian truth, both speculative and practical. The power of order which bestows grace and justifies from sin, opens heaven directly, se extendit ad ipsum coelum immediate, directe, as St. Thomas says? The power of jurisdiction points the way to heaven: it enabled the 1 The sacram entj by which Christ still makes contact with us, if they are to be validly conferred, presuppose in the minister a spiritual power connecting him with Christ the sovereign Priest. This is the sacramental power, the sacramental character. (There is no exception save in the case of Baptism.) Marriage apart, which requires in die spouses only the baptismal character common to all Christians, the sacramental power required for validly conferring the other sacra­ ments is the power of order, which is a reserved power, a hierarchic power. 1 The term “ pastor ” can designate either one who/«dr and leads the flock, or one who simply takes the flock to the pasturage. Hence the pastoral power can be understood in two ways. Ina broad sense it designates both the power of orda and the power ofjurisdiction ; in a restricted sense, as we take it here, the power ofjurisdiction alone. * Suppl., q. 19, a. 3. 22 THE APOSTOLIC HIERARCHY Apostles to reveal new truths, it enables the Pope to determine the object of faith, to assemble a General Council,1 to regulate the legitimate use of the power of order, to absolve, excommunicate, grant indulgences,1 and to control all things in the Church militant.3 2. THEIR RESPECTIVE CHARACTERS The power of order and that ofjurisdiction differ not only in their purpose, but in their nature, and in the mode of their transmission. I. The two powers differ in nature. The power of order is a participation of the priesthood of Christ. The sacramental characters, says St. Thomas, “ are nothing else than certain participations of Christ’s priesthood, flowing from Christ Himself”.1 The power of jurisdiction is a participation of Christ’s kingship: Christ being Head of the Church in a sovereign manner and in virtue of His own proper authority, the others being heads in a dependent manner and as delegated by Christ.5 The end of Christ’s priesthood is to pour into souls the very virtue of the Redemption. The created intermediaries are unable to produce so divine an effect save as simple instruments. The sacramental power is therefore a purely instrumental6 ministerial power. Hence it is infallible, not of course on account of its own proper virtue, but because it transmits the virtue of a Principal Agent.7 But the end of Christ’s kingship is the outward pro­ clamation of the full divine revelation, so that the created intermediaries can here play a freer part. The power of jurisdiction is still ministerial; but it can be said to act more in the manner of a secondary cause·, and it will not be infallible save in so far as it is divinely aided. The power of order, which exists to bring the redemptive virtue to souls, is a physical spiritual participation of the spiritual power of Christ the Priest. For if “the instrument must be proportioned to the agent”8 there will have to be a proportion, a conformity between those who act as the habitual instruments of redemption and Christ, who is its source. Hence the power of order. Like every sacramental character, the power of order is a physical spiritual power and hence indelible? It can persist, and can even be trans­ mitted, in schism and heresy.10 The power of jurisdiction, which exists for 1 II-II, q. I, a. IO. ’ II-II, q. 39, a. 3. 'Suppl., q. 19, a. 3. 4 III, q. 63, a. 3. 6 “ Vicem gerunt Christi ” (III, q. 8, a. 6). * III, q. 63, a. 2. 7 III, q. 64, a. 5. 8 “ Minister . . . comparatur ad dominum sicut instrumentum ad principale agens . . . Oportet autem instrumentum esse proportionatum agenti. Unde et ministros Christi oportet esse ei con­ formes . . . Oportet igitur ministras Christi homines esse et aliquid divinitatis ejus participare secundum aliquam spiritualem potestatem . . . Haec spiritualis potestas a Christo in ministros Ecclesiae derivatur” (St. Thomas, IV Contra Gmtrs, cap. Ixxiv). ’ HI, q- 63. a. 5. 10 II-II, q. 39, a. 3. 23 Ib — THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE the external preaching of Christian truth, speculative and practical, is a moral authority, mission and power; it is kept on the line of truth and preserved from error by providential aid involving various prophetic graces ranging from oral and scriptural inspiration, the privilege of the Apostles, to the graces of assistance given to their successors. It is lost as soon as the subject leaves the Church. Apostolic authority, but not the power of order, was lost to Judas. No regular jurisdiction can of itself continue under con­ ditions of heresy and schism.1 2. The two powers differ in the mode of their transmission. The sacra­ mental power, being physical, wall be normally conferred by way of conse­ cration, per consecrationem (consecration received from Baptism, Confir­ mation, Holy Orders). The power of jurisdiction, being moral, wall be normally conferred by way of designation, of commission, of mandate, ex simplici injunctione.2 3. THEIR MUTUAL DEPENDENCE The two powers of order and jurisdiction are really distinct. But they are not independent of each other. One of the functions of the power of jurisdiction is to determine the con­ ditions under which the power of order is to be exercised. In this respect, it is the power of order that depends on that of jurisdiction. It docs so always for its legitimate exercise. It does so even at times for its valid exercise: thus jurisdiction is required for the valid administration of the sacrament of Penance; thus a simple priest cannot validly confer Confirmation and the Minor Orders without delegation from the Sovereign Pontiff; thus most theologians consider that the Church can determine, in individuo, the valid matter and form of certain sacraments, such as those of Confirmation and Order. Moreover the most general end of the power of jurisdiction is the preservation to all ages of the full truth of the Christian revelation; and without that, the very existence of the power of order would be precarious. And the extraordinary jurisdiction of the Apostles carried with it, besides authority to reveal the divine economy of Christianity to the world, the power, not indeed of instituting, but of promulgating certain sacraments. On the other hand the power of jurisdiction resides in a regular and con­ natural manner only in the bishops, in whom is the plenitude of the power of order. In this respect it is the power of jurisdiction that depends on that of order. And if the power of jurisdiction can in fact exist in those who lack the power of order, its ultimate and definitive subject is to be found, not in them, but in others who possess it. Since the sovereign priesthood and the supreme kingship are inseparable in Christ who is the Head, it is to be expected that the powers of jurisdiction and order, their two-fold derivative, should be strictly united in order to act on the Church which is His Body. They constitute, according to St. Paul’s image, the system of joints and ligaments by which the increase of Non immobiliter adhaeret " (II—ÏI, q. 39, a. 3). ?4 * ibid. « · THE APOSTOLIC HIERARCHY charity and truth, and, in a word, the unity of one life, descends from head to body. It would be an error therefore to think of two hierarchies, one of order and the other of jurisdiction. There is one sole hierarchy, with two distinct but interdependent powers. It is there already with the first degrees of the power of order. It reaches completion in the bishops, in whom resides the plenitude of the power of order, and who possess permanent jurisdiction by ordinary and proper title. It is finally consummated in the Bishop of Rome, in whom alone resides permanent universal jurisdiction. The ministers of lower rank, and the priests, belong to the hierarchy, but their powers are incomplete and dependent ; the two permanent powers of the hierarchy, those of order and of jurisdiction, arc fully reunited only in the body apostolic directly constituted by the Pope and the bishops. According to the Code of Canon Law, which here summarizes the Councils of Trent and the Vatican, the permanent hierarchy “comprises in virtue of divine right, in the line of order: bishops, priests, and ministers; and, in the line of jurisdiction: a supreme pontificate and a subordinated episcopate.”1 The hierarchic powers of the Church are often called “the Church teach­ ing” as opposed to the “Church believing”. 4. THE CHURCH TEACHING AND THE CHURCH BELIEVING The hierarchy carries the two-fold power of order and of jurisdiction, and is therefore not only the “Church teaching” but also the “Church sanctifying”. i. To these terms would be opposed “the Church taught” and “the Church sanctified”; or rather, the Church believing and the Church loving. That of course is not a division of the Church into two distinct societies, or two halves of a society each with its own distinct set of members. It is a division between a power assisted by Christ to define the truth, speculative and practical, on the one hand, and all who recognize this power, not excluding the Sovereign Pontiff, the bishops and the clergy, on the other.2 Inasmuch as they are the depositaries and the organs of the power of juris­ diction, the Pope and the bishops constitute the Church teaching; but inasmuch as they too have souls to save, minds and hearts to be dedicated to God, they are parts of the Church believing and loving. They are bound, like all other Christians, under pain of endangering their eternal salvation, to accept all utterances pertaining to the divine law, even when it falls to their lot to propose them solemnly to the world for the first time: thus, not to lose his faith, Pius IX had to believe, along with the rest of us, the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and of Papal Infallibility. As to decrees resting on ecclesiastical law that they themselves have promulgated, here 1 Can. to3, § 3. ’ cf. R.-M. Schultes, O.P., De Ecclesia Catholica, 1925, p. 294: “ Ecclesia credens dicitur collectio omnium fidelium (romani pontificis, episcoporum, clericorum et laicorum) non quidem prout sunt numerus quidam fidelium, sed in quantum Ecclesiam constituunt." 25 I J Λ,· ·· THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE again the hierarchy are bound to conform ; not, doubtless, because a ruler can bind himselfjuridically before men by his own decrees, but because he binds himself morally before God, who will accuse him at the Last Day of “having said and not done", with having laid heavy’ burdens on men’s shoulders and stirred no finger to lift them (Matt, xxiii. 3-4).1 The division of the Church into Church teaching and sanctifying on the one hand, and Church believing and loving on the other, does not correspond to any division into active and passive. The Church teaching and sanctifying is, admittedly, active with respect to the Church believing, loving and doing; but this latter, in order to be profoundly docile to the jurisdiction that Jesus has left in the world, is by no means inert. There is nothing more alive than a faith that knows what it has to believe, than a love that knows what it ought to love and to do.1 2. The hierarchic powers of order and jurisdiction have for their deposi­ taries men who, in themselves, are part of the Church believing. These powers are exterior to the Church believing as an efficient cause (ministerial) is exterior to its effect; and it is from this standpoint that we shall chiefly consider them in this first book. But under another aspect they are interior to the Church, for they reside in men who are members of the Church believing, and who share in the faith and charity’ common to Christians. And that suffices to bring out the profound unity of the Church teaching and the Church believing. It can be compared to the sense of sight which might be said in a way to direct our bodily motions from without, but which never­ theless belongs to the body, and verifies the same law of assimilation and transmutation as do all the other bodily organs. “A man’s body is all one though it has a number of different organs ... so it is with Christ . . . And you are Christ’s body, organs of it depending upon each other. God has given us different positions in the Church; apostles first, then prophets, and thirdly teachers . . .” (1 Cor. xii. 12 and 27). Note however that properly speaking the hierarchic powers are not spon­ taneously generated by the life of the Church believing, as for example the 1 “ The Prince is said to be exempt from the law, as to its coercive power; since, properly speak­ ing, no man is coerced by himself, and law has no coercive power save from the authority of the Prince . . . But as to the directif foret of law, the Prince is subject to the law by his own will... Hence, in the judgment of God, the Prince is not exempt from the law, as to its directive force; but he should fulfil it of his own free-will and not of constraint ” (St. Thomas, I-II, q. 96, a. 5i ad 3). 2 “ It would seem the part of a Christian to be purely passive when he enters on the common life, and receives his new being immediately from the totality of believers. But in fact this passivity involves the greatest possible activity, the greatest free and personal work conceivable. The con­ trary opinion is based on a narrow view of personal and independent activity, one which reduces it to giving or generating, and quite overlooks our human capacity for receiving. Receiving often makes harder demands on us than giving—that is to say if it is to be a genuinely personal act . . . The personal and independent impulse that prompts us to acceptance is predominantly one of abnegation and love; and by allowing another to act on us we become active in our turn. Who­ ever would make of giving an activity truly his own, must first of all have leamt to receive; and it is just this which sets up and maintains relations between men. To give without having received and without ever receiving, is the prerogative of God’* (J. /V Moehler, Dû Einfuit in der Kirdu Tubingen 1825, pt. ii, ch. i, §49, no. 1, p. 198). 26 THE’APOSTOLIC HIERARCHY organ of sight is spontaneously generated at a definite instant in the physio­ logical development of the embryo. The hierarchic powers themselves pre­ side from the outset over the formation and conservation of the Church of faith and of charity. They are prior to her; not with a priority of temporal succession, but with the priority which an always active ministerial cause can have over the effect it unceasingly produces. The hierarchic power, which we have called the apostolic body, is an organic institution founded by Christ and enjoying an uninterrupted life. The individual members pass away, but the body as such docs not pass away; it is as an everlasting living thing—it will last, to be precise, as long as history. Hence there will never come a moment in the life of the Church when, having been deprived of its hierarchy, the Church believing will have to reconstitute it by a kind of extériorisation and re-achievement of itself; as the evolutive power of the embryo calls up the sense of sight from the depths of the organism. I 4 f I? III. THE CHURCH AS ISSUE OF THE HIERARCHY The Church derives her most precious and most inward gifts from the hierarchy; and from the imprint which the hierarchy stamps upon her comes her created soul.1 This latter has power to construct, animate and organize under it the whole great body of the Church. I shall here attempt a very summary sketch of the Church as seen from this standpoint; turning to account what we already know of her and drawing by anticipation on what remains to be said. We shall consider the following points, i. The power of order helps to enrich the Church with two fundamental spiritual elements : the sacramental character and sacramental grace. 2. The jurisdictional or pastoral power, whose directives arc interiorized in the hearts of Christians by faith and obedience, orientates all their activity, contemplative and practical, to divine truth. 3. The created soul of the Church is now constituted in its integrity. Under its influence the visible Church takes form—a Church outside of which is no salvation, but within which those already begin to be included who belong to it “by desire”, that is to say by a genuine move­ ment of charity. 4. The just who are still said to be “outside” the Church, although they are not yet fully within it, are on the way to be so; they are within it in virtual act. 5. Membership by desire can be concealed under quite a variety of different outward attitudes. Finally, something will be said concerning Catholic oecumcnicism. 1 “ L'anima della Chicsa consiste in ciô chc cssa ha d'interno e spirituale, cioè la fede, la speranza, la carità, i doni della grazia e dello Spirito santo c tutti i celcsti tesori chc le sono derivati pci mcriti di Cristo Redcntore c dci santi " (Compendio della dottrina crisliana, prescritto da SS. Pio X, allé diocesi della provincia di Roma, Rome 1905, p. 119). “By the soul of the Church is meant the invisible principle of the spiritual and supernatural life of the Church, that is to say the perpetual assistance of the Holy Spirit, the principle of authority and internal obedience to superiors, habitual grace with the infused virtues, etc.” (Cardinal Gaspard, Catholic Catechism, London 1932, p. 99). 27 A I _____ THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE i. THE POWER OF ORDER'S HELP IN FORMING THE CHURCH: SACRAMENTAL CHARACTER AND SACRAMENTAL GRACE The power of order enables those who possess it to act as instrumental causes in the transmission of the sacramental power (or the sacramental character) and of sacramental grace. i : The sacramental character. In this respect the Church distinguishes her children according as they are laymen or in Holy Orders. The laity, as the name indicates (/dor=pcople) are the Christian people. They too are already consecrated. It is the modem world, not the Church, that opposes the terms ‘‘laic” and “consecrated”.1 The non-consccrated consist, in reality, of the catechumens and, more generally, all the un­ baptized whether in good or bad faith. As to the laity, the consecrations effected by Baptism and Confirmation give them a certain participation of the sacerdotal power of Christ. They are members qualified to offer liturgi­ cally, along with the priest, the sacrifice of the New Law, to be ministers of the sacrament of their own marriages, and to receive the other sacraments from the hands of the priest. Those who receive the sacrament of Order participate in a third consecration thanks to which the sacrifice and sacrament of the Eucharist arc perpetuated in the world, and thanks to which the two-fold lay consecration attains to its full exercise and full significance. The consecrations bestowed by Baptism, Confirmation and Holy Orders are spiritual and supernatural powers.2 They are supernatural, not simply in the mode of their production, like miracles, but also in themselves. They bring us participation in what is most inward and hidden in the omni­ potence of the Deity.3 In this sense, their spirituality is even more precious than that of the angels if we consider them simply in their nature. The saints understand the grandeur of the sacramental characters and have even caught miraculous glimpses of it—notably that of order. What we know only by faith, became on occasion actually visible to them. St. Philip Neri guessed that a certain youth of sixteen or seventeen in layman’s clothing had been secretly ordained priest, saying “ that he had seen a great splendour on the forehead of this young man which could be only the sacerdotal character imprinted on his soul.”1 It has been granted to other saints “habitually to perceive the sacerdotal character in the souls of priests. It 1 Note in passing that when clergy and laity arc opposed in Canon Law, the clergy include not only the ordained but also the tonsured; in spite of the fact that the tonsure is not an Order but a preparation for Orders. 1M Supernatural accidens impressum animae” says Cajetan; and again: “ Supernatural potentiae " (In III, q. 63, a. 2. no. X). 3 John-of St. Thomas writes: “ Gratia zutem, aut f.dcs, aut character, non solum sunt quid supematurale quiaproductio eorum superat totam vim na.urae, sed quia in seipsis entitative superant omnem naturam, quia in se sunt participationes univocae et supematurales Dei ” (In III, q. 63, disp. 25, a. 2, no. 57, vol. IX, p. 336). 4 L. Ponnellc and L. Bordet, Saini Philip Stri and the Roman Society of his Time, tr. R. F. KenLondon 1932, p. 151. 28 THE APOSTOLIC HIERARCHY appeared to them as no merely superadded and separable exterior orna­ ment, but as an intimate constituent of the very substance of the soul, in the manner of sanctifying grace, transforming it and making it a participant of the eternal priesthood of Christ, of His dignity and powers.” The conse­ crated hands of priests meant far more to them than hands marked with the stigmata. The invisible consecration conferred by the sacraments, the sacramental character, is thus an essential element of the Church, a spiritual component of the Church. It belongs to the created soul of the Church. 2: Sacramental grace. The power of order furthermore enables those who have it to act, whether by exclusive or normal title, as instrumental causes in the transmission of grace.1 Now the sacraments confer grace not simply in its simple and naked substance—as it is found in the catechumen, in the “savage”, in the unbaptized in good faith whom God justifies in secret—but also, up to a point, with those full and perfect modalities that it had in the soul of Our Lord. This is because Jesus chose the sacraments as the means for conveying grace from His heart to ours, so that it comes through these channels in its integrity and vigour and delicacy, under the immediate influence of His sacred humanity.2 The words “immediate influence” need comment. We have here not what the ancients called the immediacy “of the suppositum”, for the whole sacrament with its rite and minister is interposed between Christ and the recipient, but what they called a “virtual immediacy”, since the whole virtue of the sacrament is due, not to the sacrament itself, but solely to Christ. Thus the grace that comes by the sacraments is rich in formalities denied to grace that is given without them. It is rather like the light of the sun and the light of the moon—they are of the same species, says John of St. Thomas, but the former is charged with more virtualities. So also grace is of the same species in one who receives the sacraments in fact (r«) and in one who receives them only in desire (po/o) ; but in the first case, though it might be less intense, it would of necessity be in some ways more complete. We must distinguish between the sanctifying grace needful for the salvation of all men without exception, and the sacramental grace which gives sanctifying grace its freest and fullest development, enabling it to take on those characteristics that it had in Christ, and thus to form in space and time the lineaments of His Mystical Body, that is to say of His Church. Thus it is within that one sole religious 1 Except in the case of Matrimony, in which the baptized spouses administer grace to each other. As to Baptism, if it is private it can be conferred by anyone; but if it is solemn the ordinary minister is the priest. * “ The sacraments arc channels by winch so to speak God comes down to us *’ (St. Francis de Sales, Les vrays entretiens spirituels, Annecy 1895, vol. VI, p. 337). The “ channel " image success­ fully conveys that the sacraments of the New Law really contain grace. It is however imperfect because grace is contained therein only “ secundum quamdam instrumentaient virtutem, quae est fluens et incompleta in esse naturae whereas in a channel the water is there in its own proper being. The beauty of a drawing passes wholly through the pencil, but it exists in the pencil in a state of becoming and is realized only on the paper. So grace, which is in a state of becoming in the sacrament, is realized only in the soul. 29 «y ■ '. ··· · . THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE society, brought forth, formed and fed by the sacraments, that the fullness of Christ is represented, and the Body of Christ is unmutilatcd. In those who, like the catechumens and the “good savage”, receive the sacraments only in desire, and not in fact, grace lacks a certain special modality.1 They arc like wanderers searching for their own country, sheep already won for Christ but not yet numbered with the flock. Thus among the spiritual components of the Church, we must count not only the sacramental character but sacramental grace. So that this too belongs to the created soul of the Church. 2. THE RÔLE OF THE JURISDICTIONAL OR PASTORAL PO WER t Sacramental grace, which can be given in its fullness only by aid of the power of order, is the very substance of the Christian life. It is to be the principle of all its ulterior developments. For supernatural life cannot remain always dormant, as in the soul of a baptized child. It is destined to awaken and to become active. One cannot conceive of faith thinking of nothing, hope expecting nothing, charity losing nothing—or, for that matter, as thinking of, hoping for, or loving anything and everything indifferently. This would be spiritual death. Life demands to develop, to pass from the indeterminate to the determinate, from power to act; by its very nature it must choose. And if the life in question is supernatural and divine, its choices, if nothing untoward occurs, will be likewise supernatural and divine. It needs to know with divine and supernatural certitude what is to be believed or not believed, what is to be hoped for or not hoped for, what loved or not loved, what done or not done. The God who created it will not leave it without speculative and practical directions which it will be its business to follow. It postulates them, feels after them, and often anticipates them. The power of order, by which God normally awakens supernatural life in the soul, corresponds to the power of jurisdiction by which He nor­ mally shows it the way it should go.2 So that even sacramental grace, when deprived of the guidance that comes from jurisdiction, lives an attenuated and constantly threatened life, only too likely to atrophy. Thus both powers 1 John of St. Thomas, III, q. 62, disp. 24, a. 2, vol. IX, p. 283. All theologians accept two things as certain: first, that each sacrament conveys its own proper and particular grace; and secondly, that the grace proper to each sacrament is not simply a more or less intense degree of habitual sanctifying grace, but adds something to this latter. If this were not so the multiplicity' of sacra­ ments would have no raûon d'etre. A third point is still disputed: whether sacramental grace is an aid that is simply momentary (Cajetan) or permanent (John of St. Thomas). The conclusions we draw from the doctrine of sacramental grace in relation to the soul of the Church would remain valid even for those who consider with Cajetan that sacramental grace is not an habitual modality of sanctifying grace, but only a divine aid in the form of simple transitory impulsions, ’The expression “jurisdictional power’* is here taken in its full traditional significance. It designates the power to pronounce with divine authority in speculative and practical matters. The Church exerts it in two ways—by transmitting divine revelation or by promulgating the decisions of ecclesiastical law. Schcebcn, referring to the passage where Jesus entrusts His lambs and His sheep to Peter, suggests the term “ pastoral power “ {ΙΓιτtongavall) {Du Mystoriai dts Chris tonturns, 1865, no. 80, p. 529). This term may be accepted. We have already noted however that taken in a broad sense the pastoral power comprises both powers—of order and of jurisdiction. 3° ■M THE APOSTOLIC HIERARCHY arc needed, the one to give sanctifying grace the fullness of its being and vigour, the other to direct and specify it. Thus and thus only can grace, conjointly with the sacramental character, form the created soul of the Church, the unifying form that holds the Church together in the bonds of truth and of love, and stamps her with the stamp of Him whose faithful and abiding image, in every place and time, it is her destiny to be. Thus we must include among the spiritual elements which go to make up the Ecclesia credens, the right orientation which the jurisdictional power communicates to the divine potencies and virtues—given of course that this orientation is freely accepted by the faith and obedience of the faithful, i.e. assimilated by them and intcriorized within them. The sacramental character, sacramental grace, the jurisdictional orientation duly interiorized —there we have the three spiritual components of the created soul of the Church. 3. THE MEANING OF THE MAXIM ‘OUTSIDE THE CHURCH NO SALVATION" I i I I II II ■ I I I It is at the precise point at which God, by the two-fold power of the apostolic hierarchy, makes contact with men that we must look for the created soul of the Church, and then go on to study the body it animates. For the created soul and the body of the Church are, of themselves, co­ extensive—in other words, the created soul does not extend beyond its body, nor the body beyond its soul. “The faithful” wrote St. Augustine, “must become the Body of Christ if they would live by the Spirit of Christ. Understand, my brothers, what I have said. You are a man, you have a spirit and you have a body. A spirit, I say, called the soul, by which it appears that you are man, because composed of soul and body. You have then an invisible spirit and a visible body. Tell me now, which of these two lives by the other—is it your spirit that lives by your body, or your body by your spirit? Every bring man will know how to reply, and if anyone cannot reply I know not whether he lives. And what does every living man reply? That it is the body, of course, that lives by the spirit. Would you then, for your part, live by the Spirit of Christ? Then be in the Body of Christ. Docs my body live by your spirit? Mine lives by my spirit, and yours by yours. The Body of Christ cannot live at all, if not by the Spirit of Christ.” He adds a little further on: “It is the Spuat that quickens, for it is the spirit that makes the members live. It gives life to those members only whom it finds in the body it quickens. The spirit that is in you, O man, and by which you are a man—does it then quicken any member that has been separated from your flesh? Your spirit is what I call your soul, and your soul quickens only those members that are in your body; if you cut off any one of them it soon ceases to be quickened by your soul, since it has no longer any share in the unity of your body. I say these tilings that you should learn to love unity and fear separation. The Christian should fear nothing so much as separation from the Body of Christ. Once he is separated he is no longer a 31 ϊ>·;- . y '· ζίΛ ■·> ί* Y- THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE member of Christ; and if he is not a member of Christ he is no longer quickened by the Spirit of Christ. For, say's the Apostle, he who has not the Spirit of Christ, is not of Christ"1 The fundamental law of the coextension of the created soul and body of the Church is not contradicted by the fact that sanctifying grace may be found among the unbaptized or the non­ Catholic baptized. There are two reasons for this. First of all, grace has to be sacramental and duty orientated before it contributes to the constitution of the perfect soul of the Church; and secondly, although the soul of the Church is only prefigured where the sacramental character, or sacramental grace, or orientated grace are lacking, yet the body of the Church begins to be prefigured there too. Nor is the fundamental law of the co-extcnsion »Ι·5 of the created soul and body of the Church contradicted by the fact that many sinners lacking grace continue to be members of the Church; for it can be said that to the extent to which they still adhere to the Church these sinners receive spiritual influences which emanate from the entire soul of the Church, which in this sense is in them by its efficiency and, as it were, dynamically. The preachers and apologists of the nineteenth century' rather lost sight of St. Augustine’s great doctrine. How were they to reconcile the axiom “Outside the Church, no salvation ”® with the doctrine, everywhere received, that those who remain ignorant of the Church in good faith may nevertheless be in a state of grace and in the way to save their souls? Protestantism, prompt to dissociate invisible realities from visible, answered that there 1 In Joan., tract. 26, no. 13; 27, no. 6. St. Augustine frequently says that there is no salvation outside the Church. He also makes it plain that he does not condemn ignorance in good faith, since he grants that those in error simply on account of their birth and upbringing “ who seek the truth with care and prudence, who are ready to accept it when discovered, are not to be counted among the heretics ” {Epist., xliii, 1). Must we say that he here applies the distinction between the soul and body of the Church? I do not think so. Mgr. Batiffol, however, while noting that “ Specht was wrong in saying that the term ‘ soul of the Church * is Augustinian ”, writes also: “ We might say that Augustine glimpsed the doctrine of the soul of the Church, the soul that holds those saints whom God sanctifies, though they do not belong to the visible body of the Church ” {Le catholicisme de saint Angtulbi, 1920, vob 1, p. 250). To talk of saints whom God would sanctify outside the visible body of the Church might be misleading. It is better to say that in this world the saints belong either re or ooto to the Church which is visible by her body. ’The axiom ‘ outside the Church no salvation” is contained equivalently in Scripture. We might die for example Mark xvi. 16: “Go out all over the world and preach the gospel to the whole of creation; he who believes and is baptized will be saved; he who refuses belief will be condemned.” It has been remarked in this connection that Jesus’ condemnation ” bearing solely on those who positively refuse to submit to the Church, does not touch anyone who, ignorant in all good faith of the divine authority of this Church, is not in fact subject to its teaching ” (E. Dublanchy, art. “Église ”, Diet, de thiol. caih., col. 2155). It was a common belief from the outset that “ all who refuse to submit to the doctrinal or disciplinary authority of the Church, heretics or schismatics, lose all right to eternal salvation” (ibid., col. 2156). The first explicit texts occur in Origen, towards 249-251; “ Let no one then mistake, let no one deceive himself: outside this habitation, that is, outside the Church, no one is saved; he who leaves it is himself responsible for his own death” {Ham. Ill, no. 5; P.G. XII, col. 841). And in St. Cyprian, in 251: “ He who leaves the Church to join himself to an adulterous [sect] separates himself from the promises of the Church. He will not come to Christ’s rewards, who abandons the Church of Christ. He cannot have God for his Father who has not the Church for his mother. If, outside the Ark of Noe anyone could have been saved, then might someone be saved outside the Church (D« Unitate Ecclesiae Catholicae, cap. vi; P.L. IV, col. 505). 32 THE APOSTOLIC HIERARCHY exists an “invisible Church” to which the just of all times belong, and a “visible Church” (or many visible Churches) which nobody is bound to enter. A certain number of Catholic writers, without wishing to dislocate the Church in tliis manner, imagined that her soul, i.e. sanctifying grace as they said, extended far beyond the limits of her body. They added that the just who in good faith remain ignorant of the Church, belong to the soul of the Church, and arc therefore not outside her. In the first place, however, such a mode of distinguishing the soul and body of the Church is without foundation in the authentic documents of the magisterium.1 It would seem to have been influenced by the Protestant conception of a “spiritual Church”, distinct from the “visible Church”2, and its use appears to be dangerous.3 On the other hand we can easily see that the soul of the Church is not sanctifying grace pure and simple, as found in those who remain ignorant of the Church in good faith, but sanctifying grace as transmitted by the sacramental power and ruled by the jurisdictional power. 1 “ It must be remarked at the same time that these same [ecclesiastical] documents, when treating of our dogma {Exira Ecclesiam nulla salus) contain nothing positive in favour of a theological distinction between the soul and body of the Church. According to the tenor of these documents it is necessary for salvation to belong actually, or in re, to the Catholic Church, apart from two cases, implicitly or explicitly indicated, in which to belong in vote suffices.” The first case, pro­ vided for implicitly, is that in which Baptism cannot be effectively received; and the second, pro­ vided for explicitly, is that in which there is invincible ignorance about the Church (E. Dublanchy, art. “ Église”, Diet, de thiol, cathol., cols. 2166 and 2167). On the question of a return to the traditional vocabulary, cf. Louis Capéran, Lt problème du salut des infidèles, essai historique, 1934, ν°1· L Ρ·54θ· 1 In what way docs the distinction made by the Abbé Perreyve differ from the Protestant dis­ tinction between the invisible and the visible Church? “ Theologians,” he say's, “ understand by the soul of the Church the society of the just in whatever time and country they may have lived. Every man who, faithful to the interior promptings of grace and docile to such divine light as he is able to receive, believes, hopes and loves in the measure of the spiritual strength that is given him, lives in accordance with what he knows to be the law and desires to die in a state as far removed as may be from error and evil, belongs to the true Church by these virtues that come to him from above .. . Outside the Church, no salvation: that is to say in the last analysis, outside the congregation of the just, outside of good faith responding to grace, outside of the quest for truth in a sincere and pure heart— outside of all this, no salvation ” {Entretiens sur ΓÉglise catholique, vol. II,pp. 504 and 546, cited by L. Capéran, Le problème du salut des infidèles, essai historique, 1934, vol. I, p. 476. (My italics). 3 So real is the danger lurking in this distinction that it can lead such good theologians as Fr. Lemonnyer {Vie spirituelle, 1 May 1932, p. 71 et seq.) to contradistinguish “ the Church visible ” and the “ Church invisible the “ Church visible ” and the “ Church in a state of grace the ” Church visible ” and “ the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ”. The Body of Christ is thus no longer considered as something in itself visible, but as something in itself invisible, of which however ‘‘ the Church visible is the true home ”. Of course it is Fr. Lemonnyer's vocabulary, not his thought, that we are criticising here. We should not speak of a soul of the Church which extends beyond the body. Above all, we must not say that the just “ without ” belong to the invisible Church. Say rather, if you will, that they' belong invisibly to the visible Church. It is difficult to think, however, that their supernatural charity is altogether without outward sign, and in this sense their membership of the Church is not wholly invisible. It could be said to be invisible simpliciter, but visible secundum quid. On the whole, and in practice, we might distinguish three ways of belonging to the Church, which is visible: (1) the membership, visible only, of sinful and carnal members (doubtless it is by virtue of the spiritual realities still surviving in them—the baptismal character, supernatural faith, supernatural hope—that they belong to the Church; but what is most spiritual in Christians, i.e., charity, is lacking); (2) the lisible and spiritual membership of just members, and (3) the simply spiritual membership of the just “ without ”. c 33 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE To reconcile the axiom "Outside the Church, no salvation’’, with the doctrine of the possible salvation of those who remain ignorant of tlie Church in all good iaith, there is no need to manufacture any new theory. .All we have to do is to apply to the Church the traditional distinction made in connection with the necessity of Baptism, the door by which the Church is entered. To the question: Can anybody be saved without Baptism? St. Thomas, who here draws on die thought of St. Ambrose, replies that those who lack Baptism re et voto, that is to say who neither arc nor want to be baptized, cannot come to salvation, “since they are neither sacramentally nor mentally incorporated into Christ, by whom alone is salvation”. But those who lack Baptism re, sed non voto, that is to say “who desire Baptism, but are accidentally overtaken by death before receiving it, can be saved without actual Baptism, in virtue of their desire for Baptism, coming from a faith that works by charity, by which God, whose power is not circumscribed by visible sacraments, sanctifies man interiorly”.1 Conformably with this distinction we shall say that the axiom “No salvation outside the Church” is true of those who do not belong to the Church, which in herself is visible, either visibly (corforaliter) or even invisibly, either by the sacraments (sacramentaliter) or even in spirit (mentaliter) ; either fully (re) or even by desire (roto); either in accomplished act or even in virtual act.2 The axiom does not concern the just who, without yet belonging to the Church visibly, in accomplished act (re), do so invisibly, in virtual act, in spirit, by desire (mentaliter, void), that is to say in virtue of the supernatural righteousness of their lives, even while, through insurmountable ignorance, they know nothing of the sanctity, or even of the existence, of the Church.3 1 III, q. 68, a. 2. 2 Speaking of the way in which one can be deprived of Baptism, St. Thomas opposes the terms re and roto; cf. Ill, q. 68, a. 2. Speaking of the way in which one can be incorporated in Christ, he opposes the words iaaamentaliler and mentaliter (ibid.) or corporaliter and mentaliter: “ Adulti prius credentes in Christum sunt ei incorporati mentaliter; sed postmodum, cum baptizantur, incor­ porantur ei quodammodo corporaliter, scilicet per visibile sacramentum, sine cujus proposito nec mentaliter incorporari potuissent ” (III, q. 6g, a. 5, ad. 1). * It is in fact to these distinctions made by St. Thomas in connection with the necessity of Bap­ tism that St. Robert Bellarmine and later theologians have recourse to explain the axiom “ Outside the Church, no salvation ”. St. Robert Bellarmine, speaking of catechumens, begins by saying that they are of the Church, not ** actu et proprie, sed tantum in potentia, quomodo homo conceptus sed nondum formatus et natus non dicitur homo nisi in potentia ”, and it is easy to see from this example—borrowed, he believes, from St. Augustine—that the in potentia of St. Robert Bellarmine is equivalent to what we have called a virtual act*, the man already concaved but not brought forth, although not man in accomplished act, is man in act begun. St. Robert continues: “ Quod dicitur: Extra Ecclesiam neminem salzari, intclligi debet de iis qui neque re ipsa, nec desiderio sunt de Ecclesia, sicut de baptismo communiter loquuntur theologi. Quoniam autem catechumeni, si non re, saltem voto sunt in Ecclesia, ideo salvari possunt ” (De Ecclesia Militante, lib. Ill, cap. 3). Suarez has the same doctrine: ” Melius ergo respondendum juxta distinctionem datam de neccsitate in re vel in cote; ita cnim nemo salvari potest, nisi hanc Christi Ecclesiam vel in re, vet in cola saltem et desiderio ingrediatur” (De Eide, disp. 12, sect. 4, no. 22). Billuart notes that catechumens “ non sunt re et propne in Ecclesia yet when they have charity, the)’ are in the Church proxime et in voto, as if one should say that a man under the porch was already in the house; they belong to the Church “ inchoative et ut aspirantes ... et ideo salvari possunt. Nec obstat quod extra Ecclesiam non sit salus; id namque intelligitur de eo qui nec re, nec in colo est in Ecclesia ” (De Regulis Fidei, dissert. 3, a· 2> § 3)· See on this point E. Dublanchy, art. “ Église”, Diet, de thiol, cathol., cols. 2163-2165. THE APOSTOLIC HIERARCHY 4. THE JUST “ WITHOUT" BELONG TO THE CHURCH BY DESIRE, NOT IN ACCOMPLISHED ACT I do not say that there is no supernatural life at all outside the Church, but simply that there is none that does not look towards her.*1 As pre­ liminary to a deeper study of the soul of the Church, let us examine more closely the position of the just “outside”. They are to be found either in those groups which lack the sacraments of the New Law (paganism, Islam, Judaism, and Protestant sects such as the Quakers), or in those groups which, while separating themselves from the Church, have kept, among other good things, various genuine sacraments. (We may call them dissidents : Graeco-Russians, and traditionalist Protestants.)2 I. The just of the first category enjoy supernatural life—i.e., sanctifying grace issuing in the infused virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The What is to be gained by substituting some new explanation of the axiom: Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus, for this traditional exegesis? “ The result is that the apologists are out of accord with the theologians and deviate from the traditional teaching. When it is introduced simply as it stands into the formula ‘ Outside the Church, no salvation ’, die distinction between the body and soul of the Church might easily falsify its meaning . . . When the Fathers and the Councils made use of this formula, diey did so to convey that all who would be saved must not only belong to the soul of the Church but must enter the external communion. It was without any detriment to the truth of the formula that the theologians reconciled it with die universality of grace and the universal possibility of salvation. They distinguished, like their predecessors, a real adhesion and an implicit adhesion to the visible Church n (L. Capéran, Le problème du salut des infidèles» essai historique, vol. I, p. 477). Happily, not all the apologists are here incriminated. In his 36th conference at Notre Dame de Paris, for example, Père de Ravignan made admirably clear that the dogma “ Outside the Church, no salvation ” condemns those who live in “ voluntary and culpable error ”, but not diose who have at least “ the implicit aspiration and desire for the Church and for Baptism”. In his very stimulating book on die Church A.-D. Scrtillanges, O.P., more perspicacious than the apologists here cridcised, clearly sees what is in fact obvious to every Thomist, that the soul and body of the Church must be coextensive; but to reconcile this truth with the doctrine of the possible salvation of those in invincible ignorance of the Church, he looks in a direction which seems at first sight contrary to that followed here. He does not reduce the soul of the Church to the dimen­ sions of its normal body by the disdnedon between grace simply sanctifying, which certainly over­ flows this normal body, and the sanctifying grace that comes of the sacramental power and is ruled by the jurisdicdonal power, which is the very soul of the Church, conformed to her normal body. On the contrary’ he leaves the expression “ soul of the Church ” an undifferentiated and universal significance, and enlarges the concept of the body of the Church so as to make it universal like the soul. ‘‘In the measure in which these organizations [pagan religions] favoured not vice and error as they did loo often, but virtue and true religious feeling, they were, through God and His Christ, salutary; they were so io speak occasional uncovenanted supports for the universal soul of the Church,'' And again: “Just as the soul of our Catholic Church envelops all souls that belong to God no matter where they’ live, so does her body envelop, as extrinsic dependencies, all other religious forms [dissident religions arc here meant] which in themselves arc her antagonists, but also partially, and in the way I have just described, her servants ” (L'Église, 1917, vol. II, pp. 112 and 119. My italics). These views should surely be made more precise. What has to be determined is this: what is there of the soul of the Church outside the Church, and what is there of the body’ of the Church outside the Church? 1 We may here recall the 29th proposition of Qucsnel condemned by Pope Clement XI: “No grace is to be had outside the Church, Extra Ecclesiam nulla conceditur gratia ” (Denz., 1379). 1 Here, without wishing to proscribe their use everywhere, I avoid of set purpose such phrases as salvation of irfidels, pagans, or heretics in goodfaith. Infidels arc saved in so far as they arc among the faithful, pagans and heretics by that in them which is neither heretical nor pagan. 35 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE whole tendency of this life is to grow towards completion, to enrich itself with those modalities which grace possesses in the sacred humanity of Christ, to open out, in a word, into that sacramental grace which, as wc have seen, is a primary and fundamental clement of the soul of the Church. It thus creates in those w ho have it a kind of living aspiration to that soul, a real and ontological desire for the Church. Men of tliis sort are of the Church, say the theologians, not yet re but already voto, mentaliter, by desire. Membership re and membership roto arc here opposed, not as real member­ ship to unreal, but as actual, consummated ontological membership to virtual, prefigured ontological membership, as membership in achieved act to membership in virtual act. Membership re, visible, corporeal, terminal, achieved, may be compared with membership voto, invisible, spiritual, prefigured, of desire; as the plant in flower is compared with the plant in bud; or, to take Bellarmine’s comparison, as the man with the child still hidden in his mother’s womb? However reduced may be the activities of grace in such souls, they will still be in need of speculative and practical directives. They must know, for example—if they are to believe in them supematurally—of the existence and providence of God, of the principles of morality and so on. Data of this sort are doubtless woven into the religious and cultural web within which they live, but are bound to be vitiated by endless errors. Each will have to do what he can on his own account, under the inner influence of the Holy Spirit who fails no one—though we may all too easily mistake our own voice for His—to sift the true from the false, the good from the bad. There will be omissions and inaccuracies, more or less serious according to the religious group concerned—Judaism for example or Islam being more helpful than paganism, itself a thing of many degrees. In so far as these religions shut out the truth they are instruments of darkness; but by such truths as they have retained (or perhaps regained), they may, however accidentally and imperfectly, be sources of light for millions of souls inwardly sustained by the Holy Spirit. 2. The just of the second category, the dissident groups, are in a better position. Like the rest, they belong to the Church not completely—not re— but in a way that is initial, virtual, beginning, voto. Note however that member­ ship by desire is realized in an analogous or proportional manner; more feebly in the first category, and to a greater degree of perfection in the second, where certain genuine sacraments of the New Law have been retained, along with numerous traditional data in the speculative and practical orders. 1 Explaining an authentic passage of St. Augustine which puts the catechumens within the Church—“Futuri erant aliqui in Ecclesia excelsioris gratiae catechumeni” (In Evang. Joan., tract. 4, no. 13), St. Robert Bellarmine writes: “ Voluit ergo dicere, esse in Ecclesia non actu sed potentia, quod idem ipse explicuit initio libri II De Symbolo [but this text is not St. Augustine’s] ubi comparat catechumenos hominibus conceptis, non natis " (De Ecclesia λ fil itante, lib. Ill, cap. 3). For E. Mersch, on the contrary, the catechumens would be members of Christ without being members of the Church, and he concludes that there need be no identity between the Mystical Body of Christ and the Church (The Whole Christ, London 1939, pp. 487 and 564). THE APOSTOLIC HIERARCHY The Gracco-Russian dissidents have kept the power of order with its three degrees: bishops, priests, and deacons. It has been perpetuated among them in virtue of the validly transmitted consecration of those who first made the schism. Thanks to the power of order the redemptive sacrifice is offered and the sacraments preserved: Baptism undoubtedly, and Con­ firmation, enabling the laity to partake to a certain extent of the sacerdotal power of Christ; the Eucharist too, the end of all the other sacraments, which of itself, whenever it is received with the right dispositions, tends to bestow spiritual life—not, like Baptism, in an inchoate state, but in a consummated state1—and to form the Church, the Body of Christ, the “sacrament of piety, the sign of unity, the bond of charity.”2 The just who belong to these Gracco-Russian groups truly possess, besides the triple sacramental character that enables them validly to continue the celebration of the Christian rite, that sacramental grace which though not, in isolation, the soul of the Church, is nevertheless a primary and fundamental constituent of the soul of the Church. Those dissident groups of the Reformed in which Baptism is still validly administered—whose marriages arc therefore held by the Roman Church to be authentically sacramental3—can still participate, but in an attenuated way, in the sacramental benefits: the sacerdotal power of Christ is imparted to them only in Baptism, sacramental grace only in Baptism and the sacra­ ment of Matrimony. As to the supernatural directives needed to give sacramental grace its collective orientation and the final perfection which will make it the soul of the Church, an immanent form uniting, ruling, and vivifying the whole Mystical Body of Christ, they exist outside the Catholic Church as doctrinal patterns—much more important and closely organized in Graeco-Russian Christianity, where the process of separation has not gone so far, than in the Protestant variety, and much more important in Protestantism, where the two Testaments are respected, than in the religions of the non­ baptized. That the number of the sacraments should diminish with the value of these doctrinal patterns is easy to understand. When the Protes­ tants of England ceased to believe in the Eucharist their ordinations ceased to be valid, and the power of order lost its divine significance.4 To-day, the Protestant modernists, who do not believe in original sin, lu Perceptio baptismi est necessaria ad inchoandam spiritualem vitam; perceptio autem eucharistiae est necessaria ad consummandam ipsam ” (St. Thomas, III, q. 83, ad. 3). 1 St. Augustine, In Joan. Evans·., tract. 26, no. 13. 3 The marriage of Protestants is not a sacrament in tlic eyes of the Protestant Church, but it is so in those of the Roman, Codex Juris Canonici, can. 1099, 2· The two sacraments really retained by traditional Protestantism arc not, as they themselves hold, Baptism and the Last Supper but Baptism and Matrimony. 4 Why arc zViglican Orders invalid? “The words which until quite recent times have been generally held by Anglicans to be the proper form of priestly ordination—‘ Receive die Holy Ghost ’—certainly do not signify definitely die order of the priesthood or its grace and power, which is, above all else, the power to consecrate and offer the true Body and Blood of the Lord in that sacrifice which is no mere commemoration of the sacrifice accomplished on the Cross . . . Not only is there in the whole Ordinal no express mention of sacrifice, of consecration 37 .Zx THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE no longer attach any great importance to the reception of Baptism. The denial of any divine power of jurisdiction, and the consequent denial of any infallible truth in dogmatic pronouncements, tends of itself to the sup­ pression of the sacramental power. 3. In the unbaptized just, and in those of the Protestant and Graeco­ Russian groups, the soul of the Church is, as it were, in formation, yet can nowhere come to fulfilment. For even where sacramental grace attains the fullness of its being and of its modalities, as among the Graeco-Russians, it lacks light, encountering directives which are not always sufficient and not always certain, neither infallibly guaranteed as a whole nor protected from the corrosive influence of modem errors; and it cannot possibly achieve that plenitude which would issue in the created soul of the Church, the immanent ruling form of the Mystical Body of Christ. It is important to note here that when we say that the Church is in for­ mation outside the Church, we are looking at things in a way which, from an ecclesiological standpoint, is accidental and secondary. We mean that those who broke with the Church took with them certain good things which by their very nature belong to her. In themselves, in virtue of their own internal exigencies, these scattered fragments demand to be reintegrated in the Church, and we know that the universal saving virtue of the God of mercy works mysteriously and incessandy for their reintegration. But clearly this reintegrating movement works in precisely the opposite direc­ tion to the original movement by which the dissident Churches cut themselves off from the true Church, and it can gain ground only by sapping the specific principle by which these Churches willed, and still will, to differ from the true Church. Outside the Church the Church is in formation, but this comes about accidentally, by -violence done to the course things have taken. Outside the Church, the Church, of itself, is in decomposition. Any fragments of life broken off from her are no sooner detached from their native whole and subjected to the influence of the principle of dissidence, than they begin to disintegrate and decay. Thus it is entirely right to hold that the struggle of light against darkness is the struggle of the Church against the world ; but we must add that even in this world the Church has One who works for her in secret, the hidden God who mysteriously enlightens every' man, whose wisdom reaches from end to end of the universe, and who does not reap where He has not sown. Other things being equal—that is to say, supposing an equal intensity of charity everywhere—membership of the Church by desire possesses a greater and greater degree of perfection as we pass from the non-baptized just to those of the traditionalist Protestant Churches, and then to those of the of priesthood, of the power to consecrate and offer the sacrifice, but, as we have already indicated, every* trace of these and similar things remaining in such prayers of the Catholic rite as were not completely rejected, was purposely removed and obliterated ” (Leo XIII, Apostoluat Curat, 1896). ■ Μ S ί - ·■ £ THE APOSTOLIC HIERARCHY Graeco-Russian Churches. But by a very disconcerting paradox, the move­ ment of conversion to the Church is not necessarily in direct, but rather in inverse, ratio to the religious perfection of these various groups. It may be that there is some mystery here like that of the Gentiles, whose conversion en masse is to precede the entry of Israel into the Church. 5. THE DIFFERENT ATTITUDES THAT MAY CO-EXIST WITH MEMBERSHIP BY DESIRE Turning now from groups of believers to individual persons, we note that membership by desire—that is to say the authentic movement of charity which effectively unites a soul to the Church—may co-exist with very diverse attitudes of mind, some of which may strike the faithful as rather strange. But it is not for the faithful, or for the theologians or even for the jurisdic­ tional authority, to be the final judge of the salvation of each particular soul. That is for God alone. There are three typical attitudes, around which we may easily group the others. First there is that of the catechumens. They have expressly asked for Baptism and the gates of the Church, which they know’ to be the Body of Christ, stand open before them. Their desire for her is fully conscious and explicit. The second attitude is that of the unbaptized child who awakes at one and the same time to the life of reason and to the life of faith, and turns to his last end w’ith a profound aspiration which will count as Baptism by desire and w’ill bring him to the heart of the Kingdom of God.1 One growm to manhood in the forests, away from the company of men, and suddenly illumined by an inner inspiration showing him what to believe, would be in a similar position.2 In these two cases, and others like them, the desire that saves these men, though it springs from a faith vitalized by charity, is not always accompanied by explicit knowdedge of Baptism or of the Church, nor even perhaps of the Incarnation and the Trinity: the explicit content of faith then amounting to tw'o points which, in the supereminent mystery of their riches, contain all the articles of the creed: namely that “God is, and rewards those who seek after Him” (Heb. xi. 6). The third attitude is that of men w'ho are aw’are of the existence and acti­ vity of the Church, but w'ho, far from seeming to move towards her, show themselves ill-disposed, perhaps oppose her with all their conscious powers, even persecute her; and yet do this because of insurmountable errors for which God does not hold them responsible, sincerely convinced as they are that they work for justice and truth. Their hostility to the Church can coexist with an authentic movement of faith working by charity, which attaches them closely to the very Church that they detest, but w-hose sons they already are. Newman had long given up “choosing his way” and was 1 cf. St. Thomas, Ï-II, q. 89, a. 6. 1 id., De Veritate, q. 14, a. 11, ad. 1. 39 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE content to be led by the divine light; yet still the Church of Rome seemed to him to be allied with Antichrist. There arc more things in a man’s heart than arc dreamt of in his philosophy; or even, often enough, in his theology. 6. CATHOLIC OECUMENICISM In an important and well-documented work, profoundly original in its approach, in which he considers how dissidents (whether as individuals or as Churches) should be regarded by Catholics, and discusses the burning questions raised by the present divisions among Christians, Père Congar has tried to define the principles of a Catholic oecumenicism.1 I. Taken in the Protestant sense, he says, oecumenicism “is neither the attempt nor the wish to rc-unitc Christian groups, considered as dissident, to a single Church considered as the sole true one. It arises among those who hold that no Christian confession in its present state possesses the full­ ness of Christianity; that even if some one of them is true, it does not, as a confession, possess the totality of truth, but that other Christian values exist outside it, not only among Christians confessionally separated from it, but in other confessions or other Churches, as confessions and as Churches.” Père Congar does not expressly dissociate himself from these last words.2 But he goes on at once to declare that : “To the extent to which this oecumenicism supposes that the different existing Christianities, having all failed at some point, possess each but a part of the truth and ought therefore, repenting and humbling themselves before God, to negotiate on a footing of equality, to consent to some sacrifices, and to unite in the profession of what of Christian truth is common to them all, while mutually respecting their differences—to the extent to which oecumenicism is that, there can be no such thing as a Catholic oecumenicism. “But if oecumenicism, as a specific movement of thought and action, is simply an awareness that a problem of re-union exists, that this problem is not exhausted, nor even fully opened up, by an exclusive emphasis on individual conversions, but that there is room for a theological determina­ tion of the status of the dissident Christianities as Christianities, of the relations of the dissident Churches, as Churches, to the true Church and to its unity—then indeed there can be, and we think that there ought to be and is, a Catholic oecumenicism.” 2. Desirous of pushing courtesy and good feeling as far as possible, Congar seems to distinguish two moments in the spiritual attitude whence dissidence springs—at the inception of Luther’s revolt for instance, or Calvin’s. There 1 Divided Christendom, London, 1939. * In $0 far as this is so, it is by reason precisely of what they have taken from the true Church or received from the loving kindness of the Holy Spirit, never by reason of the principle of their dissidence, but in spite of it. 40 THE APOSTOLIC HIERARCHY r k r I ! I ·: I I is first an extremely vivid awareness of some authentically Christian truth: gratuitousness of justification in Luther’s ease, transcendence of the divine holiness in Calvin’s. Then comes a second moment which consists in tearing this truth away from the organic wholeness of the revealed deposit in which it was given us, so as to live it apart and thus to falsify it. From this stand­ point it can be said that “at the origin of the great secessions there was as a rule a genuine spiritual impetus which, in so far as it was positive and disinterested, was truly Catholic”;1 or again that Lutheranism is true “as a spiritual attitude”, but that the error which, precisely, constitutes Lutheranism comes from the fact that “Luther, taking into account nothing but his own violent and personal experience, projected it into an abstract and universal theological doctrine”;2 or again, that “what is true in, for instance, the Lutheran . . . experience is ... a loss to the Catholic Church of today, and calls by its very nature for reintegration in it”; that, “all that is pure in Protestant or Orthodox piety or in that pietas Anglicana which gives Anglicanism its peculiar ethos is a loss, not indeed to the substance of the Church but to the expression and embodiment of its life, or at least to the wholeness of that expression.”3 I think, for my part, that it would be more correct to take the original intuition, the “seminal reason” whence Lutheranism was to spring, as something essentially indivisible, impossible to decompose into an authentic­ ally Christian truth on the one hand, and a complication of this truth with distorting errors on the other. I believe that the primitive Lutheran intuition ofjustification was itself intrinsically falsified because it inseparably associated the gratuitousness ofjustification with its forensic character. The Barthian intuition is false in itself because it inseparably associates the transcendence of the divine holiness with its incommunicability. The idée-mère of Luther­ anism, Calvinism, Barthianism and the rest, appears to me to be the doubtless complex but unique concept, the unique idea and experience of a deformed truth, not a juxtaposition of two ideas, two experiences, one true and the other false. Undoubtedly Luther might have undergone authentic Christian ex­ periences, whether before the rupture (against Grisar, I do not believe that his great trials before 1518 were due to any neurotic crisis)4 or even after—the thing is possible but remains God’s secret; in any case these Chris­ tian experiences, if authentic, are exterior to the specifically Lutheran basic experience. And doubtless too Luther retained, alongside the basic intuition of Lutheranism, an important inheritance of authentic Christian truths; the drama of the history of Protestantism as a doctrine lies precisely in the internal tension between the old and the new in it, the divine and the 1 Divided Christendom, London, 193g, p. 41. s ibid., p. 42. * ibid., p. 256. This is perhaps the passage which P. Cordovani was summarising in the expres­ sion Io scisma possiedc qucllo che manca a noi ”, and which he notes as open to criticism in the Ossenalore Romano, 22 March, 1940. 4 cf. Eludes Carmtlitames, Oct. 1937, p. 183. THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE human. Upright and saintly Protestants who have inherited the Lutheran patrimony may certainly be in possession of authentic Christian values, but the purity of these values will be compromised by them in the precise measure in which, whether in formulating them or in living them, they give way to the vertigo of the primitive Lutheran experience. And it will be safeguarded, contrariwise, in the measure in which they are freed from it by the inner power of the Spirit, who breathes wheresoever He will. Yet it is possible—and may often happen—that the state of dissidence in which such men find themselves may accidentally favour the discovery of new aspects of the Christian inheritance. We do not imagine, for example, that we have nothing of religious value to learn from the Orthodox or the Anglicans. Heresies, said St. Augustine, are thorns that prick us out of our torpor: and amongst the thorns wc may at times find roses. But in the measure in which the discoveries or experiences of dissidents have occurred under the influence of heresy, they will need to be rectified before they can be integrated. A certain theologian, illustrating his doctrine by a comparison, has supposed that just as blindness develops an extreme delicacy of touch, so dissidence could accidentally bring to light new spiritual aspects of the Gospel. But this comparison passes over a point that is not to be neglected. Blindness in no wise falsifies the sense of touch, whereas dissidence always more or less falsifies the outlook on religious life. As Père Congar forcibly says, we shall never ask our separated fellow-Christians to abandon any of the true values they hold. We shall only ask them to replace these values in the organic whole of Christian life and truth from which in the past they were torn, purifying them, where necessary, with a view to this reintegration. To purify is not to diminish. Unfortunately to the natural man purification commonly looks like an amputation! Let us add, with Père Congar, that if our separated fellow-Christians of East and West had only remained with us in the Church they would have helped us, not only by their personal qualities, but by reason of their own peculiar ethnic or spiritual temperament, to develop less imperfectly the riches of our Church. For she, being divine, has more in her than the Latin genius alone—or the genius of all the peoples of the world together—can seize and live. To return to our late problem, it may well be that between Père Congar and myself there is merely a difference of presentation and point of view, and at bottom a real accord. This would seem to be proved by passages such as the following: “To the extent to which the dissident Christianities have pre­ served the principles of communion with God left by Christ to His Church, there remains in them, with whatever mingling of errors, still something of the Church, some fibres of her being; and it may be true to say that souls can sanctify themselves in them not merely in spite of their confession, but in and by their confession. Only we must understand what we arc saying. The thing is true only in virtue of what the dissident confessions have retained of the Church; it is true of them, if one may put it so, against them; for, in 42 SHSa·; : . · *■ * V. V. THE APOSTOLIC HIERARCHY virtue of what they have of their own and in themselves, it is indeed in spite of them that souls are sanctified in their midst.”1 Briefly, souls of the dissi­ dent groups arc sanctified in virtue of what is Catholic in their confession, and in spite of the principle of dissidence. 3. In a remarkable passage of his Unity in the Church {Die Einheit in der Kirche), where he sets out to define “the true nature of the contrasts in the Church”, Mochler touches on the question of the ontological relations between the Church and the dissident formations that arose out of heresy. The organic life of the Church, he says, is the resultant at once of the closest unity and the richest diversity. It harmonises contrasts which, outside the Church, tend to start apart into contradictions: the contemplative and active tendencies, the mystical and the speculative, and so on. The heresies, escaping the control of the unifying form of the Church, are incapable of preserving the living harmony of the contrasts, so that these rapidly dissolve into contradictions. Some heresies are characterized by activity only, others by repose; but in the Church repose is active and activity is in repose—the contrasts interpenetrate and issue in a unity.2 Moehler was asked whether the Church should not unite with the heresies so as to issue in a still higher and richer reality. The answer was easy: by uniting with the heresies the Church would be absorbing not contrasts but contradictions. She takes up already into her unity, he said, all those con­ trasts, all those Christian truths, which heresy arrays against each other. She is integral. But the principle that sets the heresies at odds with each other is not included in her unity. Thus she is the unconscious unity of all the heresies before their separation, and their conscious unity after their separation ; during the separation she is opposed to all of them, as they are opposed to each other. What constituted Montanism or Gnosticism and made them what they were had absolutely nothing to do with Christianity, either in content or in form; and hence these elements are not Christian contrasts, and cannot be taken up into the unity of the Christian life. How then can we claim that heresies are necessary for the development of the life of the Church?3 It will not be out of place to remark that evil is always at work in Christians4 and naturally issues in errors. “It is due to the influence of evil that elements which nature destined to be mere con­ trasts turn into contradictions; while it is always possible and even necessary that the faithful, respecting the true nature of contrasts, should give Ç 1 Divided Christendom, p. 246. 2 cf. the chapter “ The Paradoxes of Christianity ”, in G. K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy*. “ It is true that the historic Church has at once emphasised celibacy and emphasised the family; has at once (if one may put it so) been fiercely for having children and fiercely for not having children. It has kept them side by side like two strong colours, red and white, like the red and white upon the shield of St. George. It always had a healthy hatred of pink ... It hates that evolution of black into white which is tantamount to a dirty grey . . . All that I am urging here can be expressed by saying that Christianity sought in most of these cases to keep two colours co-existent but pure.” ’ See Appendix X of this same work of Moehler's which deals with some of St. Augustine’s com­ ments on St. Paul’s words: Warn oportet et haereses esse (1 Cor. xi. 19). 4 Moehler say’s “ in the Church ”. 43 1 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE expression to all the possibilities of development within the Christian religion, making the free and harmonious play of diverse individualities concur to the enrichment of her life. But since the contrasts, without which there would be no life, turn into contradictions so often, the Church profits from the contribution brought to her life by the contrasts under this abortive form, without, for all that, recognizing them as absolutely necessary, and so as good. Thus evil never becomes good, although it can be the occasion of good, and we are not to suppose that the help of evil is needed in order to produce the good.” ; 4. The Church asks for no easy thing. Neither a certain oecumcnicism among non-Catholics, which suppresses the problem of conversion, nor the particularism of certain Catholics, who put up high fences round their charity, is according to her heart. We should endorse the following lines, which describe these two opposite deviations: “I distrust a friendship be­ tween believers of all denominations which is unaccompanied by any kind of compunction or sadness of soul, any friendship which is easy and com­ fortable; just as I distrust a universalism which claims to bring together all modes of belief and of worship in one same service of God and one same all­ transcending piety. The duty of being faithful to the light, of always fol­ lowing it as soon as it is seen, is a duty not to be avoided. In other words, the problem of conversion, for anyone who feels the divine goad and feels its urgency, is one that cannot be set aside, any more than the corresponding duty of the apostolate. And, to make up for it, I have an equal distrust of a friendship between believers of the same denomination which is easy and comfortable just because it is reserved for the co-religionist, of a universalism which would limit love to brothers in the faith, of a proselytism which would not love the other save to convert him and in the measure in which he is convertible .. J’1 If it is to take example from Christ’s love, our love for the Church will have to extend beyond the Church. It is God who, through the humanity of Christ and through the hierarchy, produces the Church in the world under her present regime. God is the First Cause. The human nature of Christ is the organ of the Divinity, the instrumental cause substantially conjoined to the Person of the Word (as our hand is substantially conjoined to our own person). The hierarchy as a whole can be considered, taking the word in a large sense, as an instrument substantially separated from the Person of the Word (as a tool we pick up is separated from our own person). The Church has therefore three efficient causes. But they do not act on the same level. They are not juxtaposed but subordinated. They are not univocal causes but analogical. The third depends on the second, which is a cause in an incomparably higher sense ; and the second on the first, which is Cause in a way which is absolutely unique and incommunicable. To forget 1 Jacques Maritain, ”> Vie intellectuelle August 1939, p. 177. THE APOSTOLIC HIERARCHY these facts, if only for an instant, would expose us to fatal errors. We must never be weary of recalling them. But in this first Book, which deals with the efficient cause of the Church, we can discuss fully only the least of her causes, the hierarchy. The rôle of the human nature of Christ and that of the Divinity itself cannot at this stage be fully defined. For they arc much more than the efficient causes of the Church. Christ as Man is not only an instrumental Cause but an ex­ emplary Cause and final Cause as well : He is the Spouse and the Head of the Church. The Holy Spirit is not only the First Cause but also the personality, the guest, and the soul of the Church. We must study the nature of the Church to bring out her dependence on the humanity of Christ and on the Deity. We shall therefore go on to examine more closely the two distinct powers of the apostolic hierarchy, namely the power of order (Chapter III) and the power of jurisdiction (Chapters IV to VIII); then their fusion in a single hierarchy (Chapter IX) ; and finally the property and note of apostolicity (Chapter X). Let us again set out the exact sense in which we are going to take the word " Church ” : When Christ is said to be the efficient Cause of the Church, Christ is considered as distinct from the Church, and the latter then includes both the hierarchy and the faithful at large. This is how the word is most com­ monly taken. When we speak of the hierarchy as the efficient cause of the Church, the hierarchy is considered as distinct from the Church. “The hierarchy” then signifies the teaching and sanctifying function whence the Church results; or what is sometimes called—though the expression may lead to confusion— the “Church teaching”. And “the Church” signifies the Church as found in all her members, the people believing, loving, acting; or what is called the “Church believing”; to it of course belong the Pope, the bishops and all the ministers, by reason of the supernatural life that is in them. In this first part, then, we shall envisage the Church above all from this last standpoint, attributing to the concept Church its maximum extension but also its mini­ mum comprehension. EXCURSUS I O.V THREE ΙΙύ4Γ5 OF DEFINING THE WORD "CHURCH” AND ON THE CORRESPONDING JVAYS OF ASSIGNING HER CAUSES I. Three meanings of the word "Church". The word “Church” can be taken in a “restricted” or impoverished sense, in an “intermediate” sense, and in a “large” or rich sense. In the restricted sense die word means the Church as found in all the faithful, the Ecclesia credens, considered as the supreme effect to which the hierarchy, the Ecclesia docens, is ordered. It is thus that St. Paul understands the word when he tells the presbyter-bishops of Miletus to “Take heed to yourselves and to the whole flock, wherein the Holy Ghost hath placed you bishops, to rule the church 45 9 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE of God which he hath purchased with liis own blood ” (Acts xx. 28). When theologians define the Church as “the community of the baptized faithful subject to a single visible head, the Vicar of Christ”, the word is similarly taken in this restricted sense. In the intermediate sense, common in St. Augustine, the word designates the totality of Christians, whether belonging to the hierarchy or the faithful. Christ is the Head, the Church is only the body. St. Thomas writes: “Quandoque enim [nomen Ecclesiae] nominat tantummodo corpus quod Christo conjungitur sicut capiti” (Suppi,, q. 95, a. 3, ad 4; cf. IVSent., dist. 49, q. 4, a. 3, ad 4). Wc may cite Coi. i. 18: “And he is the head of the body, the church.” St. Paul writes again of Christ that God “hath made him head over all the church, which is his body” (Eph. i. 22). The hierarchic functions arc then comprised within the Church itself. To the Corinthians, whom he calls the body and members of Christ, St. Paul writes: “And God indeed hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly doctors, after that miracles, then the graces of healings, helps, governments, kinds of tongues, interpretations of speeches” (1 Cor. xii. 28). In the large sense the word “ Church ” means the organic whole of which Christ is the Head and of which Christians are the body. This sense was noted by St. Thomas: “Alio modo accipitur Ecclesia secundum quod nominat caput et membra conjuncta'1 (Suppl., q. 95, a. 3, ad 4). In I Cor. xii. 12 wc have: “For as the body is one, and hath many members; and all the members of the body, whereas they are many, yet are one body: so also is Christ”, and in the expressions “to put on Christ”, “to be buried in Christ”, “to be grafted on Christ”, what St. Paul calls “Christ” is the mystical Christ, the total Christ, Head and Body, that is to say the Church in the large sense. II. The Church in the restricted sense : mode of assigning the four causes. Understood in the restricted sense the Church has for material cause the human nature of the Christians who make up the faithful (but we must repeat that the Pope and the bishops, although belonging to the Church teaching as depositaries of the hier­ archic powers, are included in the Church believing as having souls to be saved). The formal cause is the spiritual unity of the faithful, that is to say the unity of action {actus secundus) resulting from unity of soul (actus primus}. This common soul of the faithful is constituted essentially by three elements: (t) the two sacramental characters of Baptism and Confirmation; (2) sacramental grace (for the order of exercise) ; (3) the right immanent orientation received, with faith and obedience, from the jurisdictional power (for the order of specification). Here we are speaking solely of the created soul of the Church, not of her uncreated Soul who is the Holy Spirit. The extrinsic efficient causes are: (1) the Divinity considered as First Cause; (2) the humanity of Christ considered as instrumental cause conjoined to the Divinity; (3) the hierarchic powers of order (sacramental character of order) and of jurisdiction; which can be considered, strictly for the first and broadly for the second, as an instrumental cause separated from the Divinity. And for intrinsic efficient cause there is the supernatural soul, the “pneumatic” soul of the faithful, made up of the three elements named—viz. the two characters of Baptism and of Confirmation, sacramental grace, and the right immanent orientation received from the jurisdictional power—in so far as this soul is in proximate disposition {actus primus) to procure the unity of action of the Church (actus 46 lllll BWKS4I THE APOSTOLIC HIERARCHY secundus). The soul of the faithful is the principle of efficiency quo (proximate principle and wholly spiritual) of the unity of action of the Church; the Christians are the immediate principle of efficiency quod (radical and visible principle) of the unity of action of the Church. The extrinsic final causes are: (i) the Divinity considered as Last End and Sovereign Good; (2) the humanity of Christ considered as intermediate end, and as the point of concentration of all the faithful. And the intrinsic final cause is the common good of the Church comprising, as mutually ordered integrant parts— according to what St. Thomas says (I, q. 5, a. 5—cf. the commentary of Cajetan)— the mode or measure, the species or form, the order or inclination to the end; the “mode”, that is to say the happy disposition of the extrinsic and intrinsic efficient causes whence issues the soul of the Church; the “species”, that is to say die soul of the Church as we have just defined it; the “order”, that is to say the inclination which draw’s the Church towards Christ as Proximate End and towards the Divinity as Last End. III. The Church in the ^intermediate" sense, and the assignment of the four causes. Understood in the intermediate sense the material cause of the Church is the human nature of the Christians, hierarchy and faithful. The formal cause is the unity of spirit, that is to say the unity of action {actus secundus) resulting from unity of soul {actus primus) : this soul of the Church still being constituted by the three elements, which here arc: (1) the sacramental characters of Baptism, Con­ firmation and Order; (2) sacramental grace (for the order of exercise); (3) the right orientation ruling the action of the foregoing elements, an orientation considered at once as transmitted by the jurisdictional power and as received with faith and obedience by the faithful (for the order of specification). The extrinsic efficient causes are: (1) the Divinity considered as First Cause; (2) the humanity of Christ considered as instrumental cause conjoined to the Divinity. And the intrinsic efficient causes are: (1) the hierarchic powers of order and jurisdiction, used by Christ as a “separated instrument” to communicate to the Church the sacramental characters of Baptism, Confirmation (and even Holy Orders); sacramental grace (note here that Baptism, which confers a sacramental character and sacramental grace, has in fact a priest for minister when it is solemn, although non-solemn Baptism can be administered by anyone), and the right immanent orientation ruling the action of the sacramental char­ acters and grace; (2) these same elements—to wit, the sacramental characters of Baptism and Confirmation, sacramental grace and their right immanent orientation—in so far as these three are a proximate disposition {actus primus) to procure the Church’s unity of action {actus secundus). The hierarchic powers of order and jurisdiction, and the three elements which they cause in the Church, are the principles of efficiency quo (proximate principles and wholly spiritual) of the unity of action of the Church; the Christians themselves, hierarchy and faithful, are the immediate principles of efficiency quod (radical and visible prin­ ciples of the unity of action of the Church). The extrinsic final causes are: (1) the Divinity considered as Last End and Sovereign Good; (2) the humanity of Christ considered as intermediate end and as the point of concentration of the whole Church. And the intrinsic final cause is the intrinsic common good of the whole Church, whose integrant parts are the “ mode ”, being the happy disposition of the efficient causes whence the soul of the Church results, and the integrity of the material causes in which this soul 47 11)1 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE embodies itself; the “species” being the soul of the Church itself (as we have defined it above) and the “order ” being the inclination which draws the Church towards Christ as Intermediate End, and towards the Divinity as Last End. IV. The Church in the “large” sense ; nude of assigning the four causes. When the Church is taken in the large sense the extrinsic efficient cause is the Divinity con­ sidered as First Cause. The extrinsic final cause is the Divinity considered as Sovereign Good. The material cause is the human nature of Christ and of Christians. Up to that point all is simple. The difficulty begins when we try to define the formal cause and the intrinsic efficient and final causes of the Church. In my view the Church taken in the large sense has for formal created cause the unity of spirit, that is to say the unity of action (actus secundus} resulting from the unity of soul (actus primus'): this created soul of the Church being constituted by three elements: (i) the sacerdotal power of Christ and the triple sacramental character which, in Christians, is a participation of that power; (2) the sanctify­ ing grace dwelling in its fullness in Christ and sacramentally participated by Christians (these two elements concern the order of exercise); (3) the right orientation ruling the two preceding elements when they pass to second act (and this last clement concerns the order of specification). When the created formal cause, the created soul of the Church, has been determined, it is easy to assign the intrinsic efficient and final causes. Cajetan remarks that 4‘the soul rules the body in a threefold order of causality: namely, efficient causality, since it is the cause of the bodily movements of the thing animated; formal causality, since it is the form of the body; and final causality, since the body exists for the soul” (In II-II, q. 60, a. 6; cf. St. Thomas, De Anima, lib. II, lect. 7, no. 318). Thus we shall say that the soul of the Church is a formal cause if considered as giving the Church its being and its unity; an intrinsic efficient cause if considered as the cause of the Church’s activity; and an intrinsic final cause if considered as the good to which the body of the Church is ordered. But the intrinsic efficient and final causes of the Church taken in the large sense can be stated more precisely. The Church has for intrinsic efficient cause : ( i ) the spiritual virtues of the humanity of Christ which, as instrumental cause “conjoined” to the Divinity, is the head from which the Church receives its supreme movement and direction; (2) the hierarchic powers, that is to say the powers of order and jurisdiction which are, in a strict way as regards the first and in a broader way as regards the second, the “separated” instrumental causes used by the humanity of Christ to com­ municate to men, a. the sacramental characters of Baptism and Confirmation (and even Order), b. sacramental grace, and c. the right orientation accepted in faith and obedience, ruling the activity of the two former elements; (3) finally these same elements just mentioned, to wit the sacramental characters of Baptism and Confirmation (that of Order is the hierarchic power already cited), sacra­ mental grace and their right immanent orientation, since these three elements arc, in effect, in proximate disposition (actus primus} to procure the unity of life and action of the Church (actus secundus}. Note that the spiritual virtues which dwell in Christ as Man, and which are participated by the members of the hier­ archy, then by the faithful, are a principle of efficiency quo (proximate and wholly spiritual principle) of the Church’s unity of action; while Christ Himself, the members of the hierarchy, and the faithful, who act in accordance with the _____________________________ 4§_________ r’ spiritual virtues just mentioned, arc a principle of efficiency quod (radical and visible principle) of the Church’s unity of action. This last consideration fits in with what St. Thomas says in another connection when he considers the citizens as being the intrinsic efficient cause of the City. In his commentary on Aristotle’s Politics St. Thomas calls citizens “ those who arc eligible for election to deliberative and judicial offices” (lib. Ill, lect. i), and he says that “the citizen maxime is he who shares in the honours of the City” (lib. Ill, lect. 4, no. 382). The Church’s intrinsic final cause is her intrinsic common good, whose mutually ordered integrant parts arc the “mode” or “measure”; which means that the intrinsic good of the Church presupposes both the happy disposition of the efficient causes whence comes the soul of the Church, and the integrity of the material causes in which this soul embodies itself; the “species” or the “form”, which means that the intrinsic good of the Church demands the presence of the entire soul of the Church; the “order”, or “inclination to the end”, which means that the intrinsic good of the Church is specially characterized by an inclination, an élan, referring the whole Church to her last Supreme End which is the Divinity. V. How is apostolicity to be understood? If we take the Church in the “large” and “intermediate ” senses, the hierarchic powers of order and jurisdiction, coming down from the Apostles through an uninterrupted succession, will appear as appertaining to the intrinsic causes of the Church: to the intrinsic efficient cause and to the formal cause. Here apostolicity belongs to the Church ratione formae, as a property resulting from her essence. If we take the Church in the “restricted” sense, then the hierarchic powers of order and jurisdiction, coming down in uninterrupted succession from the Apostles, will be found to be attached to the extrinsic efficient causes of the Church: they constitute a ministerial efficient cause separated from the Divinity and exterior to the Church. Apostolicity in this case marks the dependence of the Church on this extrinsic efficient cause It belongs to the Church no long ratione formae but ratione causalilatis. Chapter III THE POWER OF ORDER CONSIDERED AS MINISTERIAL CLAUSE OF THE CHURCH in this chapter we shall discuss the power of order, which, along with that ofjurisdiction, is one of the two powers of the apostolic body, and plays an essential and even preponderant part in the causation of the Church in the world. But the power of order is merely the highest realization, reserved to the hierarchy, of a more general and very mysterious power, the sacramental power [pouvoir cultuel], whose two lower realizations, the one conferred by the sacrament of Baptism and the other by the sacrament of Confirmation, are the common heritage of all the faithful, and put their stamp upon and inwardly penetrate the whole life of the Church as she now is.1 We cannot define this sacramental power without first treating of the Christian cultus itself, to which the power is essentially related, and in function of which the definition must be framed. I. THE CHRISTIAN CULTUS, AXIS OF THE EXISTING CHURCH The Christian cultus is the cultus of the New Law. It succeeds the merely figurative cultus of the Old Law. It announces and prepares the life of glory in which all truth will be openly and perfectly unveiled, where neither the offering of sacrifice nor the reception of sacraments, nor the exercise of what St. Thomas calls succinctly the exterior cultus, will have any further reason to exist. This Christian cultus is no longer pure figure, nor, as yet, is it pure reality: it is reality, but under a veil of figures.2 Founded by Christ, it is continued in the Church. * Translator s note. This ^oicvxr cultuel also here in the original called the pcuccir sacramentel) is a generic term for all the powers and characters conferred by the sacraments; the highest of these being die character conferred by the sacrament of Holy Orders and the corresponding power to offer the eucharistie sacrifice. There is perhaps no really satisfactory English equivalent for pouvoir cultuel, rituel, liturgique. We shall call it throughout the sacramental power. The French culte we have generally rendered as ” cultus ”, reserving “ cult ” for non-Christian systems of religion. 2Sl. Thomas writes that “ the state of the New Law is intermediate between the state of the Old Law whose figures are fulfilled in the New, and the state of glory, in which all truth will be openly and perfectly revealed, and where there will be no sacraments” (III, q. 61, a. 4, ad 1). The priesthood of Christ is eternal, not as regards the offering of the sacrifice, but as regards the end 5° THE POWER OF ORDER i. THE INSTITUTION OF THE CHRISTIAN CULTUS BT CHRIST THE PRIEST When the Word of God—with a view to establishing a new world better than the world of innocence, a second reign of mercy, a second Kingdom of God more perfect than the first1—united Himself personally to a human nature destined to be the principle of the regenerated creation, the living bond between heaven and earth, He conferred on this human nature the created gifts of a double unction, a double consecration and sanctification, in the order of cultus and in the order of grace. So that Christ, as Man, was on the one hand constituted Ruler and Head of a supreme cultus, foretold for the last age of the world, a cultus in which those effectively participate who arc incorporated in Him as His members by the reception of the sacra­ mental character, which is a sacramental and sacerdotal power; and, on the other hand, was constituted Ruler and Head of a supreme outpouring of sanctity and love, in which those fully participate who are incorporated in Him as His members by grace received in all its sacramental perfection.2 It is of Christ as Ruler, Head, and Founder of a new cultus that we have to speak here. He appeared on the threshold of the last age of the world as the High Priest designated by God : “For every' high priest taken from among men is ordained for men in the things that appertain to God . . . Neither doth any man take the honour to himself but he that is called by God, as Aaron was. So Christ also did not glorify himself that he might be made a high priest: but he that said unto him, Thou art my Son; this day I have begotten thee. As he saith also in another place: Thou art a priest for ever, according to the order of Melchisedech” (Heb. v. i, 4-6). He came not only to abrogate the weak and temporary priesthood of the Old Law, but to set up the perfect and definitive priesthood in its place: “the others indeed were made priests without an oath’’, by way of carnal generation, “but this with an oath, by him that said unto him : The Lord hath sworn, and he will not repent, thou art a priest for ever" (viî. 21) ; the others succeed each other “because by reason of death they were not suffered to continue: but this, for that he continueth for ever, hath an everlasting priesthood ”(vii. 23-25); the others would offer the blood of goats and oxen with a view to a carnal purification, but He would offer His own Blood to obtain eternal redemption (ix. 11-14); the others would offer daily the same sacrifices which can never take away sins, but He offers but one sacrifice for sins and “by one oblation he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified” (x. 11-14). In this priesthood, in this cultus, and consummation of the sacrifice, that is to say as regards the glory which the elect will receive from Christ (q. 22, a. 5, and ad 1). “After this life the exterior cultus will not remain, but the end for which this cultus exists ” (q. 62, a. 5, ad 3). 1 God’s dominion extends to all things, but it is exercised either principally by way of justice or principally by way of mercy; and in the latter case it is called the Kingdom of God. * Non-sacramcntal sanctifying grace is, as we have seen, but an initial participation in the sanctity of Christ. i 11 Ml ? THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE in this unique sacrifice, all that was legitimate in the priesthood, the cultus and the sacrifice of the Old Law—and before that of the law of nature— finds its meaning, its justification and its fulfilment. The entire cultus of earlier ages had in feet no validity save in so far as it announced and prepared, obscurely enough no doubt, the cultus, the worship, that Clirist was one day to offer. That is why this supreme cultus, this supreme wor­ ship, which by a mysterious anticipation had been the centre of gravity of prior cults and the ground of their efficacy, would one day efface them alto­ gether, and remain alone valid, alone legitimate, alone capable of bringing remission of sins, to the exclusion of every other oblation, for “where there is a remission of these there is no more an oblation for sin ” (x. 18). It follows furthermore that the efficacy of this supreme cultus, this decisive oblation, is to be passed on from age to age till the end of all the ages; that all later sinful generations wall need its purifying virtue, and that those who, victims as they are of collective and invincible error, fail to recognize its nature or its perpetuity in time are indebted to it nevertheless for all that is best in them, for their good faith and for the uprightness of their hearts. A. The Double Movement of the Christian Cultus Because He was Man as we are, save for sin, and because His human nature subsisted in a divine Person, Christ, considered in His humanity, occupies a mid-position between the people and God. He is therefore quali­ fied to act as the bridge between heaven and earth, as die Pontiff and Media­ tor, transmitting the prayers that go up from man and the benefits that come down from God—the Priest par excellence who, on the threshold of the New Covenant, was to give the world to God and God to the world.1 I. THE ASCENDANT MEDIATION OF THE CULTUS: THE SACRIFICIAL OFFERING I. The act by which Christ offered prayers and satisfactions to God for men was certainly, first of all, a meritorious act. For in the first place His human nature subsisted in the Person of the Word of God ; and in virtue of this “grace of union” which conferred on all His least acts, however intrin­ sically natural, an infinite dignity, He was marked out to be the Intercessor and Advocate of all men.2 The grace of union, furthermore, called for the presence of “habitual grace” in Christ’s soul, a grace that would superelevate all His human activity, make it intrinsically supernatural, proportion it inwardly to obtain corporeal glory for Himself and, in virtue of a providential 1 “ Proprie officium sacerdotis est esse mediatorem inter Deum et populum, inquantum scilicet divina populo tradit. .et iterum inquantum preces populi Deo offert et pro eorum peccatis Deo aliqualiter satisfacit” (St- Thomas, III, q. 22, a. 1). 1 “ If Christ could merit for others, this was radutdiUr ft praauppasitizc in virtue of the grace of union, but also farmaliUf ft proximt in virtue of habitual grace, inasnftich as this last was united to and completed by the grace of union. In the absence of habitual grace the grace of union would have sufficed to enable Christ to merit for others; but His soul would not then have been able to give birth to meritorious acts in so connatural a manner ” (John of St. Thomas, III, q. 8, disp. 10, a. i, 110.50; vol. VIII, p. 261). 52 THE POWER OF ORDER disposition, the spiritual salvation of all who would not refuse to enter into union with Him as His members.1 Christ’s intercession thus merited the salvation of the world. 2. But the act by which Our Lord interceded for men was not simply any meritorious act; it was a sacrificial act, an act of the exterior cultus, one in which wc find, present in a supereminent way, the four ends of sacrifice: adoration, propitiation, thanksgiving and impétration. When the hour came for Christ to consummate His intercession on the cross, His death was something greater than any martyrdom, even the most heroic. Scripture represents it as an offering, as a sacrifice: “Christ. . . hath loved us and hath delivered himself for us, an oblation and a sacrifice to God for an odour of sweetness” (Eph. v. 2) ; as an incomparable voluntary2 sacrifice, prefigured by the sacrifices of the Old Testament but destined to replace them for ever on account of its divine efficacy: “neither by the blood of goats or of calves, but by his own blood Christ entered once into the Holies, having obtained eternal redemption” (Heb. ix. 12). He entered “into heaven itself, that he may appear now in the presence of God for us. Nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high priest entereth into the Holies every year with the blood of others, for then he ought to have suffered often from the beginning of the world : but now, once, at the end of the ages, he hath appeared for the destruction of sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Heb. ix. 24-26). Jesus then wished once and for all to merit eternal life and the reconcilia­ tion and renewal of the world by a sacrificial act,3 that is to say by an exterior act, a rite significative in itself of the “latreutic” homage, the homage of adoration, due to God alone—the generic end of all sacrifice being the homage of adoration.4 This exterior rite, this latreutic homage of the New 1 “ Grace was bestowed upon Christ, not only as an individual but inasmuch as He is Head of the Church, so that it might overflow into His members; and therefore Christ’s works arc referred to Himself and to His members in the same way as the works of any other man in a state of grace are referred to himself” (St. Thomas, III, q. 48, a. i, 44 Utrum passio Christi causaverit nostram salutem per modum meriti? ”). 2 From the standpoint of the perverse will of the Jews the death of Christ was certainly no sacri­ fice; His executioners had no thought of offering a victim to God, but sinned grievously. From the standpoint of the will of Christ freely accepting His passion, it had the character of a sacrifice, cf. St. Thomas, HI, q. 22, a. 2, ad 2; q. 48, a. 3, ad 3. 3cf. St. Thomas, III, q. 48, a. 3: 41 Utrum passio Christi operata sit per modum sacrificii? ** Christ, as Schcebcn remarks, “ could have merited grace and glory for us without having to suffer; but satisfaction, on the contrary, absolutely demanded suffering. For without self-alienation and renunciation, without destruction, the honour filched from God could not have been restored to Him; but merit demands simply that something be done for God’s honour and glory out of love for God. Since however the most excellent gift of love is to offer oneself to the beloved, and since the most perfect adoration of God consists in really bringing oneself to naught before His infinite majesty, it must be concluded that Christ's merit attained its highest point with His passion and death ” (Die Mystesien des Christentums, 1895, no. 67, p. 439). 4 Sacrifice, unlike offering, is “ an essentially latreutic symbol ”, it is ‘‘ in its essence a rite significa­ tive of that homage which is due to God alone. It is this that distinguishes it from other acts of religion and gives it its special moral value ” (I. Mcnncssier, O.P., La notion de sacrifice, in his translation of St. Thomas’ De Religione (II-II,q.8o, ctseq.), Paris 1932, vol. I, p. 350). “The latreutic character of the sacrifice of Christ is seldom strongly emphasised. Sacred Scripture itself usually 53 iiI F h’;! THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE Testament, was appointed and defined in advance by a decree of God the Father, to which Jesus voluntarily submitted Himself: “Thinkest thou that I cannot ask my Father, and he will give me presently more than twelve legions of angels? How then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that so it must be done?” (Matt. xxvi. 53). ‘’Therefore doth the Father love me: because I lay down my life that I may take it again. No man taketh it away from me : but I lay it down of myself. And I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. This commandment hare I received of my Father” (John x. 17-18). That is why Scripture presents the death of Our Lord as a work of obedience: “For as by the disobedience of one man, many were made sinners: so also by the obedience of one, many shall be made just ” (Rom. v. 19); and again: “He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the cross” (Phil. ii. 8). This sacrificial act, by which Christ glorified His Father and merited eternal life for us, contained in an eminent way the virtue of all the sacrifices of the Old Law. It was not only more latreutic than the holocaust, but also more propitiatory, more eucharistie, more impetrative than the old sinofferings and peace-offerings.1 There is a sense in which it can be said that Christ’s sacrifice was primarily propitiatory, a sacrifice for our sins, since it would never have been offered if man had not sinned. Its first purpose was to offer to God on behalf of man something for which God’s love was greater than His offence at sin. The Passion of Christ on that account might be called reparatory, redemptive, satisfactory, propitiatory for sins, reconciliatory. “You were not redeemed with corruptible things, as gold or silver, from your vain conversation of the tradition of your fathers; but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb unspotted and undefiled” (1 Pct. i. 18-19): “And he is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only but for those of the w'hole world” (1 John ii. 2). His voluntary sacrifice has the power of appeasing God for all sins and of reconciling Him with the world: “we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son" (Rom. v. to); “For God indeed was in Christ reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor. v. 19). It pleased God “to reconcile all things unto himself, making peace through the blood of his cross” (Col. i. 20). That is what we mean in the first place when we say that Christ is the Redeemer.2 presents it as simply propitiatory, but with no other intention, as is clear, than to set forth the divine cultus in general in relation to the benefits it brings us. If the cultus draws down God’s rewards on the creature, its supreme end is nevertheless not the beatification of the creature, but the glorification of God; and that indeed is the end of the beatified creature himself. Similarly, Christ’s sacrifice is assuredly ordained to reconcile the creature and restore it to grace, yet it is not the less willed for itself as a latreulic sacrifice directed to the glory of God ; and in that precisely we must seek its deepest essence and highest significance. V»’c believe indeed that the propitiatory and impetratory character of the sacrifice of Christ cannot be fully brought out save when its latreulic character is properly appreciated’’ (M. J. Schecben, op. cit., no. 65, p. 416). 1 St. Thomas, I—II, q. 102, a. 3; and ad 10. 1 cf. St. Thomas, III, q. 48; and q. 49, a. 4. The Passion of Christ effected our salvation by way of iatisfaction and of redemption; it recondled us with God. The various characteristics distinguishable —- THE POWER OF ORDER The sacrifice of the cross is likewise a supreme eucharistia, a supreme thanks­ giving for benefits already received; and that is why, when He instituted its memorial, Jesus gave thanks over, eucharistized, the bread and the wine (Luke xxii. 19; Matt. xvi. 27). Finally, it is a supreme petition, a supreme impétration. Impetratory efficacy, like meritorious efficacy, supposes a preordination by which God decides to attach certain favours to certain actions. But whereas a meritorious act, stamped as it is with love, is in a measure proportionate to the thing it looks for in return, a petition, as such, appeals to nothing but pure mercy. Now Christ’s sacrifice was not only meritorious but also impetratory; as it says in Hebrews v. 7: “Who in the days of his flesh, with a strong cry and tears offering up prayers and supplications to him that was able to save him from death, was heard for his reverence.” Thus it was by a meritorious intercession, but expressed in a sacrifice at once latreulic, eucharistie, impetratory, and propitiatory, that Christ offered the world to God. 3. In his third Jentaculum, written at Poznan in 1524, on the priesthood, Cardinal Cajetan noted how, unlike simple martyrdom which is a sacrifice only in the metaphorical or spiritual sense, the death of Our Lord is a sacri­ fice properly so called. It has been suggested, he says, that the martyr who offers himself at the stake or to other tortures, as on an altar, is himself truly and properly a priest. And, if so, our argumentation collapses; for if the virtue of the voluntary martyr suffices to realize priesthood properly so-called, we should apparently be entitled to call everyone a priest who makes an offering of his bodily pains, and so forth. “We reply that there is a capital difference on this point between Christ and the martyrs; as sufficiently appears from the following three considerations: “ a. As to the sacrificial principle itself: Christ offered Himself in virtue of His public sacerdotal function, having been made Priest for this same sacrifice ; which can be said of none other. For no one is made priest that he may offer himself in sacrifice. Men were made priests under the Old Law to offer calves and lambs, and under the New to offer the Body and Blood of Our Lord. Whereas Our Lord Jesus Christ, taken from amongst men by God the Father, was made Priest on man’s behalf to offer Himself to death on the altar of the cross, as St. Paul explains in the Epistle to the Hebrews. in the Passion are all closely bound up with each other; they’ arc so many aspects of one and the same reality. Just as Christ “ by the satisfactory virtue of His sacrifice delivered us from the infinite debt to God we had contracted; so by the meritorious virtue of His sacrifice He made God our debtor, presenting Him with a price so lùgh that henceforth the high grace of filiation would be granted by God to man not only out of pure favour and free love, but as of right; and precisely in that appears the supreme and mysterious significance of Christ’s sacrifice ” (Ni. J. Scheeben, op. cit., no. 67, p. 347). St. Thomas wrote: “ Per passionem Christi est sublata odii causa: tum propter ablutionem peccati; tum propter recompensationem acceptabilioris boni ” (III, q. 49, a. 4, ad 2). 55 Π I I •i 1Π • i I THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE “b. As to the oblation: Christ’s oblation was, of its nature, voluntary. Christ died, in other words, because He willed it, and not with His divine will only but with His human will, not simply as accepting a fact but as producing an effect. For since His soul already rejoiced in glory it was within His power to prevent this corporeal death; but He did not will to prevent it. An altogether unique significance thus attaches to the idea of the voluntary in the text of Isaias: ‘He was offered because it was his own will’ [liii. 7]. Our Lord Himself says: ‘I lay down my life that I may take it again. No man taketh it away from me: but I lay it dowm of myself.’ And He adds explicitly: ‘I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again” [John x. 18]. The oblation of the other martyrs, on the contrary, was not in itself voluntary': it was not in their power to die or not to die, but only, in certain cases, to choose some of the circumstances of their death (place, time or manner). Their offering w’as voluntary only in its mode of acceptance: in the sense that they accepted death for the honour of God, making, in some sort, a virtue of necessity’. “c. As to the thing offered. The Blood of Christ has power of its own nature to reconcile and satisfy for others, and even for all others (cf. i John ii. 2), whereas the blood of the martyrs w’as meritorious only’ for themselves. “Thus the sacrifice of Christ on the cross is one thing, but the sacrifice made by the death of a martyr is quite another. In offering Himself, Christ was really and properly a Priest The martyrs are priests only in the derivative sense of the word, the sense in which it designates a virtue." 2. THE DESCENDENT MEDIATION OF THE CULTUS: THE INSTRUMENTAL CAUSALITY OF THE PASSION Christ furthermore gave divine things to the world, being fully qualified to do so. His human nature, which subsisted in the Person of the Word, was consecrated and sanctified simply by its union with the Divinity; and it was also the subject of habitual grace so rich that it might be called infinite. For these two reasons it could be the lucid, loving and sensitive instrument by which the divine benefactions were to be poured out into the depths of souls. St. Paul declares that Jesus is the Head of the body of the Church (Eph. i. 22); that it pleased God that all fullness should dwell in him (Col. i. 19). St. John too presents Him as one who is “full of grace and truth”, “and of his fullness we have all received, and grace for grace” (John i. 14, 16), and as the vine by which the branches bear their fruit (xv. 4). If it be true that it was at the supreme moment of His death on the cross that Jesus conferred the highest divine favours on the world, we must recognize this death as the instrumental cause of our salvation. By reason of the divine virtue that passed into it, it became an inexhaustible source of grace for all the world, capable of purging away all sins, past, present or to come. It THE POWER OF ORDER remains only to enter into contact with it by faith, at least implicit, and by the sacraments of the faith.1 B. The Liturgical Character of the Christian Religion It follows that a cultus, a liturgy, a ministry, is at the heart of Christianity. “Having therefore a great high priest that hath passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God: let us hold fast our confession” (Hcb. iv. 14). “We have such a high priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of majesty in the heavens, a minister [/riZourgoj] of the holies, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord hath pitched, not man” (viii. 1-2). “But now he hath obtained a better ministry, by how much also he is a mediator of a better testament” (viii. 6). “Then said I: Behold I come to do thy will, O God: he taketh away the first that he may establish that which followeth. In the which will we are sanctified by the oblation of the body ofJesus Christ once. And every priest indeed standeth daily ministering, and often offering the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But this man offering one sacrifice for sins, for ever sitteth on the right hand of God . . . For by one oblation he hath perfected for ever them that arc sanctified . . . Now where Λ »O\ there is a remission of these, there is no more oblation for sin God and the world could of course have been reconciled in many various ways ; but what do these texts mean if not that in fact the reconciliation was accomplished in a ritual drama in which Jesus offered His life to God and communicated grace to men? Our salvation is the fruit of the noblest of all acts of love, which because it came from a Man and was to be a rallyingpoint for men, expressed itself in a visible sacrifice, preordained by God from all eternity. A liturgy, ascending and descending, is at the root of the Christian religion. It constitutes as it were its framework. It cannot be detached from it—not at any rate without tearing Scripture to bits and chang­ ing Christianity into something else.2 The Priest of this liturgy is Christ. “Although He is priest not as God but as man, He who is priest and who is God is but one and the same Being.”3 And if the priest is a mediator con­ secrated to send up the prayers of the people to God, and to bring the favours of God down on the people, it is clear that no one ever was or ever will be a priest like Christ, “a priest for ever according to the order of Melchisedcch”4 and “mediator of the New Testament”. 1 cf. St. Thomas, III, q. 48, a. 6; cf. ad 3: “ Passio Christi, secundum quod comparatur ad divinitatem ejus, agit per modum efficientiae and q. 49, a. I, ad 3. ’The sacrifice of Christ is opposed, in the Epistle to the Hcbre\s*s (x), to the sacrifices of the Old Law which no longer pleased God, both because the time was at hand when figures had to make way for the reality, and because they were offered hypocritically and without love. Such sacrifices, so offered, were w hat Jesus condemned in the Pharisees when He reminded them of the text of the Prophet Osec: ‘k Go then and learn what this mcancth: I will have mercy and not sacrifice” (Matt. ix. 13; xii. 7). 3 St. Thomas, III, q. 22, a. 3, ad I. 4Jesus is called “ priest according to the order of Mclchiscdech ” for two reasons. First, as the Epistle to the Hebrews (vii) explains, because the levitical priesthood, finally eclipsed by the 57 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE I shall have occasion to point out later that, as Man once more, Our Lord is also King. God, Priest, King: all these characters arc conjoined in the opening vision of the Apocalypse: the white hair of one “like to the Son of Man”, signifying His pre-existence and eternity; the long tunic, signifying His priesthood; the golden girdle, His royalty. His divinity is incommunic­ able. But His priesthood, His kingship and His grace overflow on to the Church which is His Body. nox with Christ Just as God, wishing His own creatures to bear some likeness to Himself, has given them not only being but also activity, making them (in dependence on Himself as First Cause) true causes in their turn; so Christ, coming to take up the work of creation and make all things new among men, gave them not only the power of entering into union with Him, but also the power of acting in Him, of becoming (in total dependence on Himself) true causes themselves, offering the world to God with Him and likewise with Him giving God to the world. Nothing could be more wonderful than the confidence God thus shows in His creatures, making them co-operators with His own providence and with Christ’s redemption. “For we,” says St. Paul, “are God’s coadjutors” (i Cor. iii. 9). And having recalled that God has recon­ ciled us to Himself by Christ’s mediation—that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself—he adds that this same God has given him i.e., Paul—the “ministry of reconciliation ” and has placed in him the word of reconciliation”; so that, as he goes on, “we are ambassadors for Christ, God as it were exhorting by us” (2 Cor. v. 18-20). The Spirit of God, the Divinity whole and entire, descended at the instant of the Incarnation on the humanity of Christ, the Anointed, like an unction. He consecrated, sanctified and spiritualized Him in two ways. First by making Him the Head, the Ruler, the High Priest of a supreme cultus in which heaven and earth should meet: there we have the sacramental or sacerdotal consecration, sanctification, spiritualization. Then, by making Him the Head, the Source, of the supreme outpouring of sanctity reserved for the last age of the world: there we have the consecration, sanctification, spiritualization of grace and of charity. Christ received these two consecraperfect priesthood of Christ on the cross, had been of old momentarily effaced by the better priest­ hood of Melcbiscdech. The book of Genesis ixiv. 20) represents Abraham, from whom the levitical priesthood was to issue, as paying tithes to Melchisedech, king of Salem and priest of the Most High. Secondly, as noted by the Council of Trent (cf. Denz. 938), because, just as Melchisedech, going before Abraham, brought bread and wine (Gen. »v. 18), so Jesus, at the Last Supper, offered His Body and Blood under the appearances of bread and wine. In connection with those passages of the Epistle to the Hebrews which oppose Jesus the one Priest to the succession of the levitical priests, we note that the power of “ the priests ” to-day is not there to supplent the supreme mediation of Jesus, but to make it present. He alone is the perfect Priest. They are //ir priests, that is to say mere ephemeral ministers dispensing His eternal redemption to all ages. THE POWER OF ORDER tions, these two sanctifications, these two spiritualizadons, as Head and Chief of a restored humanity: the first consecrated Him as Priest, the second as Sanctifier or as Saviour.1 Both are to overflow from Him upon all those who become His members and form His Body, as the nervous impulses start from the head to move the whole body. Something parallel may be noted in the case of the third communicable privilege of Christ, His spiritual kingship over minds in the speculative and pracdcal orders; which is to be poured out on men by means of the jurisdicdonal power. The Church thus appears as an extension to men of the communicable privileges of Christ. Taken in her fullness and perfection she results from a triple incorporation of men into Christ their Head by way of influx into them of something of His priesthood, something of His grace, and something of His truth. She participates in the privileges of Christ the Priest, Christ the Sanctifier or Saviour, and Christ the King. Her mission will not be simply to recall memories, however great and divine they may be, but really and efficaciously to continue through space and time the first initiative taken by Christ in inaugurating on the threshold of the last age a new cultus, com­ municating a grace that of itself looks to the redemption of the whole world, and openly and authoritatively proclaiming the message of deliverance to human minds. Let us now return to the first of these incorporations with Christ, that effected by the sacerdotal or sacramental power. ‘ί II I D. Incorporation with Christ the Priest All those on whom the consecration, the sacerdotal sanctification of Christ, is bestowed, are consecrated and sanctified in His likeness in the line of the cultus or sacerdotium.2 They will be incorporated with Christ the Priest. Something of the inalienable spiritual power which made of Christ the unique Priest will pass into them along with the sacramental power or character of Baptism, Confirmation and Order; spiritualizing them, making them the ministers, the instruments, the co-operators of the one sole eternal Priest. They will be admitted to participation in the cultus offered once by the unique Priest, but availing for all ages. One after the other they will be 1 Since Christ’s cultus was ordered to His grace we could bring these two consecrations together and attribute them to Christ as Priest (or, on the other hand, to Christ as Saviour). We speak more strictly in attributing die first to Christ as Priest and the second to Christ as Saviour. Λ third privilege will concern Christ as King. 2 All the sacraments, say’s St. Thomas, confer the consecration of grace. But three of them, Baptism, Confirmation and Holy Order, confer a sacerdotal consecration as well: “Sanctificatio autem duobus modis accipitur. Uno modo pro emundatione, quia sanctum est mundum. r\lio modo pro mancipatione ad aliquod sacrum, sicut dicitur akare sanctificari, vel aliquod hujusmodi. Omnia ergo sacramenta sunt sanctificationes primo modo . . . Sed quaedam sunt sanctificationes etiam secundo modo, sicut patet praecipue in ordine, quia ordinatus mancipatur ad aliquid sacrum . . . Quicumque autem mancipatur ad aliquid sacrum spirituale exercendum, oportet quod habeat spiritualem potestatem, et solum talis. Et ideo non omnia sacramenta novae legis characterem imprimunt, sed quaedam, quae etiam secundo modo sanctificationes sunt ’’ (IV Sent., dist. 4, q. i, a. 4, quaesi. 2). 59 ■i *· - THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE t called to enter into the current of the ascendant mediation; to offer to God, by Him, with Him, and in Him, all the men of their generation. /\nd similarly they will be called to enter the current of the descending mediation, so that by Him, with Him, and in Him they may give God to all men of their generation. All down the course of history, then, there wall be men incorporated with Christ the Priest, participating in the spiritual unction of His inalienable and sovereign priesthood, drawai in the wake of His divine liturgy. The mediat­ ing priestly action of the Head will be transmitted and diffused throughout the body. Fully achieved once and for all where Christ Himself is concerned, it remains unfulfilled with respect to those who, being His members, have to continue to work down the ages, by Him, with Him, and in Him, for the salvation of the world. It was carried out in the Head at the origination of the New Covenant, but so that it might reverberate through the body through­ out history. It entered time in order to remain always really present, as opposed to being caught up out of it at once, leaving only a memory, how­ ever divine. An efficacious presence through the ages, no mere memory— that is the mystery of the essential priesthood of the Head, sustaining the purely ministerial priesthood of the members, and of the body which is the Church. The Church will not exist in its fullness save there where the priesthood of Christ and the Christian cultus continue still to operate. But since it brings us the presence of the Mediator “who gave himself a redemption for all” (i Tim. ii. 6), this visible cultus is not offered solely for those who belong visibly and completely to the Church. It is offered also for those who belong to her invisibly and incompletely. Indeed, it is offered for all men: for, says St. Paul, it is good and acceptable to God our Saviour “who will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth", that “supplications, prayers, intercessions and thanksgivings be made for all men” (i Tim. ii. i and 4). Consequently, we have to recognize two categories of the saved. The first, invested with the sacramental characters, are able to participate in the very exercise of the redemptive cultus; the others, lacking the sacramental characters, can participate only in the satisfactory effects of the Christian cultus, and that in a measure inevitably incomplete. The first are saved inasmuch as, united to Christ, they continue to offer the redemptive sacrifice for all men of their generation; the second are saved inasmuch as the re­ demptive sacrifice continues to be offered for them by Christ and the Christians of their generation. The first are borne up by Christ that they may bear others up; they are full members of Christ; they, with Him, and as incorporated with Him as Priest,1 are members who redeem and save. The second are borne up by Christ and by the first sort of members ; they are members of Christ incompletely, they can only be redeemed and be saved. 1 On incorporation into Christ, the King and Prophet, by the preaching of the truth, and on incorporation with Christ the Redeemer by sacramental grace, cf. below, pp. 511 and 513. 6o THE POWER OF ORDER 3. THE CONTINUATION OF THE CHRISTIAN CULTUS IN THE CHURCH The Christian cultus, initiated by Christ, is continued in the Church in all its essentials, in two ways: by the bloodless sacrifice and by the sacraments. A. The Bloodless Sacrifice I. When He appeared as “the high priest of the good tilings to come Christ made “the oblation of liis body once” and “obtained eternal re­ demption” (Heb. ix. ii, 12; x. 10). It was in the predestined offering of a moment that the eternal God, and the still unended succession of ages, were reconciled. The blood-stained cross remains planted for ever at the centre of the true religion. It brings fresh vitality to dying souls, dispenses life, softens the hardness of hearts: in that day, said Jahve by His prophet, “I will pour out on the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of prayers, and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced. And they shall mourn for him as one moumeth for an only son.” It purifies from sin: “In that day there shall be a fountain open to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem: for the washing of the sinner” (Zach. xii. 10; xiii. 1). It must be made present everywhere. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother had not died.” Christ did not deny it. He had indeed said something of the same sort to the disciples: “Lazarus is dead, and I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, so that you may believe.” But when the two sisters came to Him one after the other, when Mary was at His feet and “when he saw her weeping, and the Jews that were come with her weeping”, then “He groaned in the spirit, and troubled liimself, and said : Where have you laid him? ” (John xi). There are supplications that can be resisted at a distance, but not face to face. Martha and Mary knew it, and God knows it too. That, precisely, is why the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. And that too is why, having been lifted up on the cross to draw all men to Himself, He desired that the cross itself should continue present, not distant, carried down on the flow of time. Having therefore delayed until the supreme sacrifice was already beginning, He founded the mysterious institution which was to be its vehicle and to perpetuate its virtue. The liturgy of Maundy Thursday which the disciples were to reproduce “in memory of him” would truly bring to all later genera­ tions His Body “given for us”, and the Blood “of the New Testament”, “shed for us” (Luke xxii. 19-20), “for the remission of sins” (Matt. xxvi. 28). Those who “eat this bread and drink the chalice” show “the death of the Lord ” (1 Cor. xi. 26) until He comes to substitute for this repast in which the realities remain veiled under the sacramental signs, the repast in which they become manifest, and in which the faithful will drink the wine of love from the unmixed chalice “in the kingdom of his Father” (Matt. xxvi. 29). 61 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE In sum, the bloody sacrifice is brought to each one of us by the renewal of the bloodless rite instituted at the Last Supper; round which the Church is gathered and to which she clings.1 2. Let us be quite clear about this bloodless rite. It is not substituted for the bloody sacrifice. It is subordinated to it. The bloodless rite of the Mass is a real and true sacrifice because Christ and His sacrifice on the cross are not merely figured there, but also really and truly made present. Just as several consecrated Hosts are by no means several Christs, but several real presences of the one Christ, so, to speak strictly, several Masses do not make several sacrifices, but several true presences of the one sacrifice.* 1 The whole evangelical mystery of the Eucharist is faithfully expressed in the prayer of the Missal where it is said that: “ As often as the commemoration of this offering is celebrated, the work of our redemption is carried out hujus hostiae commemoratio celebratur, opus nostrae redemp­ tionis exercetsr] ** (Dam., IX post Pent.). *The Mass is Christ bringing us the bloody sacrifice of the cross in a bloodless rite. In a little work on the sacrifice and the rite of the Mas {Opuscula, Venice 1612, vol. Ill, tract, io) which he addressed on the 3rd May 1531 to Pope Clement VII and directed against the Lutherans, Cardinal Cajetan seems to have got deeper than other theologians into the thought of St. Thomas (III, q. 83, a. 1) concerning the essence of the sacrifice of the Mass. Luther, as we know, held that the Eucharist truly contains the Body and Blood of Christ. But, in opposition to the universal belief of the Roman Church and of the dissident Oriental Churches, he denied that it is a sacrifice. He therefore also denied that it is an expiatory rite for the living and the dead. To establish that the celebration of the Eucharist contributes to the expiation of sins, Cajetan had only to cite the words of Jesus in the account of the Last Supper as given by St. Matthew: “ This is my blood of the New Testament, which shall be shed for many unto remission of sins ” (xxvi, 28). He show's next that the sacrifice of the Mass, far from derogating from the sacrifice of the cross, is one with it, and prolongs it to our own day. Christ offered Himself on the cross in a bloody manner and offers Himself on the altar in a bloodless manner. But the daily repetition of the bloodless rite docs not make a new sacrifice. First, because the reality present, on the cross and on the altar, is identically the self-same Christ. Next, because the bloodless rite is not juxtaposed but subordinated to the bloody sacrifice. Far then from supplanting it, it is but the vehicle of that remission of sins which Christ then obtained for us. Here, in the original text, arc some lines of the delicate discussion in which, thirty years before the Council of Trent, this great theologian treated the mystery of the Mass: “ Hostia cruenta et incruenta non sunt hostiae duae, sed una hostia. Quia res quae est hostia, est unamet res; non enim Christi corpus in nostro altari est aliud ab illo Christi corpore quod oblatum est in cruce, nec sanguis Christi in nostro akari alius est ab illo Christi sanguine qui fusus est in cruce. Modus vero hanc unam eandemque hostiam immolandi, alter est. Quia ille unicus substantialis ac primaevus immolandi modus, fuit cruentus, ut pote in propria specie, corporis fractione, in cruce sanguinem funderis; iste vero quotidianus, externus, arcessoriusque modus, est incruentus, utpote, sub specie panis et vini, oblatum in cruce Christum, immolatitio modo repraesentans. Quod arca. Novi Testamenti hostia cruenta et incruenta, unica est ex parte rei oblatae. Et ex parte modi offerendi, licet sit diversitas, quia tamen iste modus (scilicet incruente immolare) non est, secundum seipsum, tanquam disparatus modus immolandi institutus, sed dumtaxat ut refertur ad cruentam in cruce hostiam, consequens est apud sapientes et penetrantes quod ‘ ubi unum nonnisi propter alterum, ibi unum dumtaxat est ’, consequens, inquam, est, non posse affirmari, proprie loquendo, duo sacrificia, aut duas hostias, aut duas oblationes, immolationes et quovis nomine appelles, esse in -Voco Testamento ex hoc quod est, in hostia cruenta, Christus in cruce, et in hostia incruenta, Christus in altari; sed esse unicam hostiam, semel oblatam in cruce, perseverantem, modo immolatitio, quotidiana repetitione, ex institutione Christi, in Eucharistia . . . In Novo Testamento non repetitur sacrificium, seu oblatio, sed perseverat, immolatitio modo, unicum sacrificium semel oblatum; et in modo perseverandi intervenit repetitio, non in ipsa re 62 - · * THE POWER OF ORDER It was to multiply, not the supreme sacrifice, but its presence among men that Our Lord, ou the night that He was betrayed, having taken bread and having broken it, saying: “This is my body which shall be delivered for you”, added these words reported by St. Paul and St. Luke: “This do for the conunemoration of me”; and that having taken also the chalice, saying: “This chalice is the New Testament in my blood”, He added, as St. Paul again notes: “This do, as often as you shall drink, for the commemoration of me.”1 The bloodless rite of Maundy Thursday therefore not only symbolises the bloody immolation of Good Friday but also places us in the presence of it, and the Church has power to renew it. In place of the bloody rites of Israel she offers a pure oblation, a sacrifice unbloody in its mode, in the sight of the whole world, as already foretold by the prophet Malachias (i. io-ii): “I have no pleasure in you, saith the Lord of hosts, and I will not receive a gift at your hand. For from the rising of the sun even to the going down, my name is great among the Gentiles; and in every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to my name a clean oblation. For my name is great among the Gentiles saith the Lord of hosts.” A sacrificial meal, whose in­ comparable mystery St. Paul was to point out to the Corinthians, is to follow this offering, which is therefore truly a sacrificial offering. When they ate victims offered to idols, the pagans believed themselves to enter into union with the idols; which are nought. When they ate the victims offered oblata; nec etiam ipse, qui repetitur, modus, concurrit ad sacrificium propter se, sed propter oblationem in cruce commemorandam incruente . - . Absit a fidelium mentibus etiam cogitare quod ad supplendam efficaciam hostiae in cruce oblatae celebretur missa: celebratur enim tanquam vehiculum remissionis peccatorum per Chris­ tum in crucc factae; ita quod, quemadmodum non est alia hostia, ita non aliam affert remis­ sionem peccatorum.” The sacrifice of the cross suffices of itself to intercede for the men of every age. And yet, as Scrip­ ture witnesses, it does not make useless the perpetual intercession of Christ in heaven—“ he is also able to save for ever them that come to God by him: always living to make intercession for us ’* (Hcb. vii. 25). The glorious intercession ratifies the sorrowful intercession by which it continues to save the world. The bloodless rite of the Mass, which brings down into our midst the glorious inter­ cession of heaven, and ratifies the sorrowful intercession of the aoss which is efficacious throughout all time, derogates from neither of these intercessions: it is subordinated to them. Cf. ray opusculum La sainte messe ou la permanence du sacrifice de la loi nouvelle, in the scries La Pensée catholique, Liège 1937. 1 i Cor. xi. 23-32. Père Allo in an excursus entitled Synthèse et origine de la doctrine eucharistique de Saint Paul, minutely studies this text and that of 1 Cor. x, 14-22 from an exegetieal standpoint, and establishes that they expressly contain the whole doctrine that has remained the Catholic doctrine, “ which thus takes the Catholic dogma of the sacrifice of the Mass back to St. Paul, con­ trary to all the various Protestant theories”. He adds: “ The ‘ realism \ the ‘ sacramentalism and in a word the Catholicism of St. Paul, is no longer in doubt for any of those whose minds have shaken off the dissident confessions of faith. As for the question of the eucharistie sacrifice, which along with transubstantiation was the old subject of controversy between Catholics and Protestants, it seems that we arc on the way to an agreement with critics emancipated from the Churches . . . The historical evidence more and more inclines diem to recognize that St. Paul presents all the essential lines of the dogma of the Eucharist—as also of others. Thus St. Paul is more or less openly given back to us, and that is no small thing ” {Première épître aux Corinthiens, Paris 1935, PP· 3°5 and 307). Of course, if Catholicism is in St. Paul, the rationalist critics do not therefore conclude that Catholicism is right, but that St. Paul is wrong. THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE to the true God, the children of Israel believed themselves to enter into union with the true God. But now neither the sacrifices of the pagans, nor even those of Israel, are permitted any longer, under pain of provoking the jealousy of the Lord; for now, when they cat the bread and drink the wine of their sacrifice, which are the “Body” and the “Blood ” of Christ, Christians do truly drink of the chalice of the Lord and do truly partake of the table of the Lord : “The chalice of benediction which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? And the bread which we break, is it not the partaking of the body of the Lord? For we, being many, arc one bread, one body, all that partake of one bread. Behold Israel according to the flesh : are not they that eat of the sacrifices partakers of the altar? .. . But the things which the heathens sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God. And I would not that you should be made partakers with devils. You cannot drink the chalice of the Lord and the chalice of devils ; you cannot be partakers of the table of the Lord, and of the table of devils. Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he?” (i Cor. x. 16-22).1 The redemptive sacrifice—consummated once and for all on the part of the Saviour who is the Head, but not yet so on the part of men who are the members as long as any yet remain to be saved, to be incorporated with the sufferings and death of their Head ontinucs to work itself out in the Mass, and to incorporate successive generations until the Body of Christ, which is the Church, shall be complete. 3. The virtue of the redemptive sacrifice, thus perpetuated and brought before us in the daily bloodless rite of the Mass, is, in itself, infinite, and capable of remitting all the sins of the whole world.2 But in fact this infinite purification is participated only in a finite measure, so that it can always increase. In the intercession of Christ, to be sure, and even in that of Our Lady and the saints of heaven, there is more than enough love to save all the sinners on earth, and all the souls in purgatory; but the effects of this sovereign intercession are applied to us only in virtue of a profoundly mysterious dispensation. In part, no doubt, they are bestowed on us directly, immediately, and fill us with prevenient graces. But also to a large extent they are be­ stowed only in proportion to the zeal and charity of the Church here below. God, who has placed His Church in time, takes account of her prayer and her charity when He wills to act on her in time. It has been said: “Just as in a single star there is heat enough to melt all the glaciers on earth, and still we have winters; just as, to make the arm of a lever act, you have to 'cf- E.-B. Allo, O.P., P’mibrt Ip'itrt aux Corinthiens, pp. 239-243, and 302 ct seq.: also Hebrews xiii, 10: “ We have an altar whereof they have no power to eat who serve the tabernacle." * The infinite meritorious virtue of the death of Christ is due radically and presuppasitireh to the “ grace of union it is due p-orimalrij and/onnaZZjr to “ habitual grace ”. Even without habitual grace the grace of union would have sufficed to invest all Christ's actions with an infinite value. Cf. John of St. Thomas, III, q. 8, disp. to, a. 1, no. 50; vol. VIII, p. 26t. Cajetan said that the aerifice of the Mass, being the very immolation of Christ, has an infinite impetrator/, meritorious and satisfactory value of itself and absolutely, but is in fact applied to us in proportion to the devotion of the Church which offers it, and of those for whom it is offered {Opuscula, vol. II, tract. 3 q 2) See .Voca it citera, 1932, p. 193. THE POWER OF ORDER have a fulcrum; so God wills that heaven’s interventions in this world arc find a fulcrum on earth. Where is it found? In the saints still wayfaring in this life.”1 And that is why Our Lord prompts the best of His servants continually to offer His bloody passion to the Father for the conversion of the world.2 Participation in the redemptive sacrifice is brought about already by prayer, by “faith”, or better still by the “sacraments of the faith”, notably by the Eucharist. Wc may say that the devotion with which the whole Church militant unites herself with the redemptive sacrifice in Holy Com­ munion, decides from moment to moment both the extent and the quality of her conquests; and the marvellous expansion of the Church on the morrow of Pentecost may be attributed to the unimaginable fervour of love with which Our Lady and the Apostles communicated. Each Mass is a mine ready to produce an explosion in the Church, and in truth producing an explosion in souls fully open to love. Père Rabussicr, whom I have just quoted, rightly says that “the prayer of the Church glorified owes all its efficacy on earth to someone who receives Communion, and is thus in touch with Calvary and the Cross.”3 In speaking of the measure in which the redemptive sacrifice is applied to us when placed before us in the bloodless rite of the Mass, we have had to leave for a moment the question of the strict validity of the rites and to enter the higher domain of love and sanctity to which the whole Christian cultus is ordered. We must return now to the cultus itself. 1 L. E. Rabussier, S.J., “ Quelques notes sur le ‘ manage spirituel ’ ”, Revue d'ascétique ft ώ mystique, 1927, PP· 289 to 291. I have slightly altered the text. The author wrote: “ God wills that all heaven’s interventions here below shall find a fulcrum on earth.'’ As for the Church in purgatory, wc shall sec later on that it remains dependent, in a way, on the Church in time. 3 “ O Father, why do you tarry? So long ago it was that my beloved poured forth his blood. I approach you in the interests of my Spouse . . . You will keep your word, O Father, for you have promised him all nations ” {Ecrits spirituels de Marie de ΓIncarnation, Ursuline, ed. Dom Jamet, vol. II, p. 311). 0 Every night between Thursday and Friday you shall share this mortal distress which indeed I wished to undergo in the Garden of Olives, and which will reduce you, without your being able to understand it, to a kind of agony harder to support than death. And to accom­ pany me in the humble prayer I then addressed to my Father in the midst of all my anguish, you arc to rise between eleven o’clock and midnight to prostrate yourself for one hour with me, with your face to the earth, as much to soften the divine anger by asking mercy for sinners as to sweeten the bitterness I felt when abandoned by my Apostles, a bitterness that forced from me the reproach that they could not watch one hour with me ” {Life ofSt. Margaret Mary Alacoque, written by herself). To another Visitandinc, Sister Marie-Marthe Chambon, Jesus showed His wounds, saying: “ My daughter, behold the world’s treasure. The world docs not want to recognize it. Here is some­ thing that can pay all debts ”, and He taught her this prayer which she pledged herself to say lovingly every ten minutes: “ Eternal Father, I offer you the wounds of Our Lx)rd Jesus Christ, to heal those of our souls ” {Vie de la soeur Marie-Marthe Chambon, Chambéry 1928, pp. 62 and 63). 3 Revue d'ascitique et de mystique, p. 291. In connection with the text of St. Peter, addressed to all Christians—“ be you also as living stones built up, a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ ”—(1 Peter ii, 5), Cajetan writes in his third Jentaculum'. “ The Victim of the New Testament surpasses all others because He is Christ Himself, our God. But the offering of His sacrifice, if wc consider those who offer it, is not always better than ‘spiritual victims’; there arc times, alas, when it is very inferior.” The “spiritual victims ” arc acts of virtue performed in God’s honour. Ï : I■ J THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE B. The Sacraments Before ascending to heaven Christ willed to institute certain mysterious rites which were to signify the multiple riches of redemptive grace, and bring them to each particular man. These are the sacraments of the New Law. They are, above all, instruments by which the virtue of the Passion of Christ is brought to us; and it was for a sign of this, say the Fathers, that from the wound in Christ's side there flowed water and blood, symbolising the two principal sacraments, Baptism and the Eucharist. This is their highest, but not their sole function. For each sacrament furthermore sup­ poses, both in minister and recipient, certain positive acts of the cultus which depend for the most part both on the sacramental power for their validity and on the virtue of religion for their moral quality. For the moment how­ ever we shall consider the sacraments only in their immediate relations with the ontological realities of sacramental grace and of the sacramental power. Just as the material pencil of a Michelangelo can make the spiritual beauty of a human countenance appear on the paper, so certain very humble visible things—the sacraments—are able in the hands of God to place immaterial realities in the depths of souls. This, to be sure, is not done independently of the dispositions of the subject, dispositions which will always be required (merely negative ones, of course, in the child who has not yet personally sinned, but positive ones in the adult) ; but it is done in a measure surpassing these dispositions, though in proportion to them, in such a way that he who approaches with two talents will come back with four, and he who has four with eight. Here once more the Gospel words are verified: “In what measure you shall mete it shall be measured to you again, and more shall be given to you. For he that hath, to him shall be given; and he that hath not, that also which he hath shall be taken away from him” (Mark iv. 24-25). That Christ’s redemption comes to us through the sacraments of the New Law is a mystery expressly noted in Scripture, for example, in connection with Baptism: “Amen, amen, I say to thee, unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God” (John iii. 5). “For we that are dead to sin, how shall we live any longer therein? Know ye not that all we, who are baptized in Christ Jesus are baptized in his death?” (Rom. vi. 2-3). God the Father has saved us “by the laver of regeneration [palingCTi«ù] and renovation of the Holy Ghost, whom he hath poured forth upon us abundandy through Jesus Christ our Saviour” (Tit. iii. 5, 6). And St. Augustine asks, in a formula which has become traditional: “Whence has the water such virtue that it touches the body and cleanses the heart? ”1 Interior regeneration, the life of the spirit, purity of heart, in a word, sanctifying grace—that is the chief effect of the sacraments of the New Law. 1 In Jocnms Eccmg., tract. Bo, no. 3. 66 X THE POWER OF ORDER And doubtless the sanctifying omnipotence of God is not circumscribed by the sacraments {potentia Dei sacramentis visibilibus non alligatur) ; it overflows them in every direction and carries the gift of the Holy Spirit all over the world. It is none the less true that these sacraments are the normal and privileged means of sanctifying grace.1 In passing through them it acquires in some sort those singularly rich virtues on account of which we call it sacramental grace. It receives the power of producing certain special effects characteristic of the Christian life, “ordinantur . . . sacramenta ad quosdam speciales effectus necessarios in vita Christiana.”2 From this it results’that the Mystical Body of Christ will be faithfully reproduced in space and time. Thus to simple sanctifying grace, sacramental grace adds a new divine aid, a particular perfection. Sacramental grace is, as it were, a richer and more immediate participation of the communicable sanctity of Christ. Thence comes to the Church all that is most consummate in her sanctity, all that is most inward of her beauty, all that is closest to perfection in her likeness to Christ. With the power to perpetuate the redemptive sacrifice of Christ which brings to each generation the whole undivided virtue of the Passion, the Church has thus the power to dispense its multiple effects to each particular man by the sacraments of the New Law. Thus is fulfilled the cultus in spirit and in truth.3 ( 3. THE SACRAMENTAL POWER COMMON TO ALL CHRISTIANS, AND THE SACRA MENTAL POWER OF THE HIERARCHY If Christ had to be consecrated as High Priest to inaugurate the cultus of the New Law, something of His consecration will have to be communicated to those whose duty it will be, as His ministers, to continue this cultus through all time for the salvation of all men. The consecration left by Christ to His ministers, the diminished imprint of His sacerdotal or liturgical power, is constituted by what are commonly called the sacramental powers or characters. There are three of them. But from the standpoint of the treatise on the Church they will have to be put into two groups. 1 We could say: the perfect means and even, in a sense, the universal means, of grace, cf. above p. 12. ’ St. Thomas, III, q. 62, a. 2. ’ I should like to recall in tills connection the very just remark of a rationalist exegete: “ The notion of * worship in spirit and in truth ’ commonly held by Protestant theologians, is no more rational than it is evangelical . . . Christ's reference to * worship in spirit and in truth ' (John iv. 23-24) docs not oppose a purely interior to an exterior worship; but a worship that can be called inspired, spiritualized, the Christian worship which the Evangelist knew, and which is quickened with the Spirit given to believers, the worship that can be carried out everywhere, is substituted for the localised worship at Jerusalem or on Mount Garizim. The Evangelist who gives us the formula of worship in spirit and in truth is the same who gives us the formula of the Incarnation. The two correspond: God is Spirit, and so also is His Word; the true worship is spiritual, because founded on the communication of the divine Spirit; but as the God-Spirit manifests Himself in the Incarnate Word, the life of the Spirit communicates and sustains itself by the spiritual sacraments, the water of baptism, the bread and wine of the Eucharist ” (Loisy, L'Evangile et L'Église, p. 258). 67 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE In the one group we shall put the two sacramental powers which in them­ selves are common to all the members of the Church, namely the power or character of Baptism, and the power or character of Confirmation (Section II). In the other we shall put the power or character of Order which belongs exclusively to the hierarchy, and comprises several degrees (Section HI). II. THE SACRAMENTAL POWER COMMON TO ALL MEMBERS OF THE CHURCH r. THE EXISTENCE OF A SACRAMENTAL POWER All who would be saved must, in some way or other, be in touch with the divine liturgy of redemption. When, even invincibly (and so non-culpably), they know nothing of it or misconceive it, they must still, if they arc to be saved, be in accord with it in their innermost desire, that is to say by living faith—buried, it may be, in the ashes of their hearts—without which “it is —pcxible to please God” (Heb. xi. 6). But an attachment by desire alone to the liturgy of redemption, although it may be enough to make them partake initially and in a measure of the final effect of the Christian cultus—that is to say of redemptive grace—does not enable them to participate in the exercise of the cultus, which nevertheless, by Christ’s will, is to be perpetuated in time. A new spiritualization, a new and original power will therefore be needed in those who validly exercise this cultus. We wall call it the sacramental power {pouvoir cultuel). Christ is the principal cause of the Christian cultus, and men are the instruments He uses to perpetuate it on earth. But in this case, as St. Thomas remarks, “the instrument must needs be proportionate to the agent”,1 so that the spiritual virtue of Christ the Priest must here descend on His ministers and be shared by them. Hence the sacramental power. A traditional, immemorial and constant usage, whose roots appear in Scripture itself, shows us that believers, even if saints, cannot all indif­ ferently and validly pronounce the eucharistie words over the bread and wine, nor impose their hands on the baptized ; nor can all indifferently be admitted to the Eucharist or the other sacraments: “Let none eat and drink of your eucharist save only those who arc baptized in the name of the Lord’, as it says, for example, in the Didache (ix. 5). Hence it appears that the essential acts of the Christian cultus presuppose in those who carry them out (save for the reception and even for the conferring of Baptism) a power in whose absence they will be invalid and ineffective. This power is not to be had by simply desiring to participate in the Christian cultus. It comes from the effective reception of certain sacraments and that is why it can be called the sacramental power, the sacramental character the sacramental sign. It consists in a “sacring”, in a consecration. Although x IV Can. Gm., cap. bodv. 68 THE POWER OF ORDER all the sacraments sanctify, first of all in the primary and chief sense that they confer grace, which purifies from sin, three sacraments, namely Baptism, Confirmation and Holy Order, sanctify further in this second sense, that they confer a sacramental power, a consecration, a spiritualization, which enables the recipient effectively to cany out the acts of the Christian cultus, summed up in the sacrifice to be offered and in the sacraments to be received or dispensed.1 Of these three consecrations the baptismal consecration is the only one which can be conferred, if need be, by a minister who does not yet possess it himself. The other two sacramental consecrations cannot be transmitted save by a minister who already possesses them, so that the sacramental power comes down to us from Christ and the Apostles through a strict continuity of transmission which cannot suffer the least interruption without being irretrievably lost. 2. THE NATURE OF THE SACRAMENTAL POWER Because He subsisted in the divine Person of the Word, and because His soul was filled with all the powers needed to save the world, Christ was consecrated to institute the Christian cultus and to prescribe the manner in which this cultus, henceforward alone pleasing to God, should be per­ petuated. All those who possess, in any degree whatsoever, the power to continue the Christian cultus, participate directly in the sacerdotal consecra­ tion of Christ. The simple sacramental power given at Baptism is already enough to incorporate us with Christ, Chief and Head of the Christian cultus, and makes us members, ministerial organs, living, free and spiritual instru­ ments of it. It associates us initially with the sacerdotal work of Christ, and engenders us to the Christian religion, to the Christian liturgy.2 The sacramental power, like grace, is an invisible,3 spiritual and super­ natural reality. It is, however, distinct from grace. The latter perfects man immediately on the moral plane of personal sanctification, “in ordine ad 1 “ Per omnia sacramenta sanctificatur homo secundum quod sanctitas importat munditiam a peccato, quae fit per gratiam \ sed specialiter per quaedam sacramenta, quae characterem imprimunt, homo sanctificatur quadam consecratione, utpote deputatus ad cultum divinum ” (St. Thomas, III, q. 63, a. 6, ad 2). Scheebcn {Die Myslerien des Christenfums, 1865, θ3> ΡΡ· 55° an^ 557), wrongly calls Baptism, Confirmation and Order the “ hierarchic” sacraments; the hierarchy begins only with the sacrament of Order. On the other hand Scheebcn distinguishes four “ consccratory ” sacraments; and that is too many if we think only of those three consecrations which are characters, and too few if we admit that Matrimony and Extreme Unction confer a kind of consecration: for they’ actualise the receptivity of the baptismal character, so that it becomes impossible to repeat them during, respectively, the life of the spouses or during the same danger of death. 3 “ Baptism, inasmuch as it generates children of adoption has the quality called grace for its principal effect. But inasmuch .as it generates a Christian, that is to say a member of the Christian religion, of the Christian family, its principal effect is the character ” (Cajetan, in III, q. 69, a. 10 no. iv.) We add that sacramental grace makes us members of the Christian family much more intimately still than the sacramental character. 3 The signs are visible. If the character, which is invisible, can be a sign, that is because it is stamped upon us by a visible sacrament. We know, for example, that someone has the baptismal character, if we know’ that he has received the sacrament of Baptism (St. Thomas, III, q. 63, a. 1, ad 2). 69 Μ < î ’I1 !I Π Î B 1 ' Λ THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE sancte agendum”; the sacramental power perfects man immediately in view of the valid exercise of the Christian cultus, “in ordine ad valide operandum”. And although the Christian cultus is itself ordered to the production of grace as to its ultimate effect, it remains true that its valid exercise is one thing and its ultimate effect another, and that this latter will sometimes be hindered by human perversity. The sacramental power, unlike grace, can never be lost once given ; and that is why the sacraments that confer it cannot be repeated. St. Augustine notes the fact in connection with the consecrations given by Baptism and Order. In the deserter who returns to the ranks, he says, the soldiership persists and only needs to be recognized ; and so in the apostate who returns to the Church the baptismal character is still there and does not have to be given again.1 Holy things claim holy usage, and the use of the sacramental power in a state of sin is a sacrilege; but remains valid. It may be said of this power on the supernatural plane, as of the powers of intelligence and will on the natural plane, that though God has given them us so that we may use them well, they are still retained by those who use them to their own perdition. That is why St. Thomas said that the sacramental or sacerdotal power is, on the supernatural plane, in the position of a “power”, a faculty, which can be put to good or ill use; whereas grace and the virtues are "habitus” which cannot be used save well. 3. THE GENERAL EFFECTS OF THE SACRAMENTAL POWER I. It is entirely due to the sacramental or sacerdotal power that the Christian cultus continues down the ages. It is by its means that the re­ demptive sacrifice is made present to each generation, and that redemptive grace is brought to each individual man in the sacraments—Baptism being the only exception, since it does not absolutely demand a consecrated minister. If therefore the sacramental power ceased to be handed down in a given region and if even Baptism ceased to be conferred there2 the Christian cultus would there perish. The redemptive sacrifice would no longer be made really present day by day, grace would no longer possess its sacramental perfection; the very notion of sacramentality would be forgotten. Incor­ poration with Christ as Head of the Christian cultus would disappear. Even incorporation with Christ as Head of Christian grace and sanctity would become not only more difficult and less frequent, but would be de­ prived of its most admirable effects. It would be like a tree uprooted from its native soil and climate, and unable to bring its fruits to maturity. Among the best men, living in good faith and in love, true Christianity would be as 1 Contra Efnst. Parmenioni, lib. II, nos. 28 and 2g. 1 It is well known that the persecuted Japanese Catholics lived without priests for a century and a half, and remained faithful to their Church. Baptism maintained sacramental grace among them along with an initial sacerdotal power which enabled them to perform certain acts of the Christian cultus, for example to contract sacramental marriage. But it was deprived of its highest exercise. 70 THE POWER OF ORDER it were a distant home country, still invincibly unknown or misconceived, towards which nevertheless their hearts would be really orientated, unknown to themselves. 2. The sacramental power or character occupies an important place in the sacramental economy. “When we call it sacramental”, writes Scheeben, “that is not simply because it is conferred by certain sacraments, but also because, in the case of those sacraments that confer it, it is the centre of their efficacy and their significance, and in the case of the others it is the basis and ground of all their activity.”1 Let us consider these two assertions. a. The character is the centre of the efficacy of the sacraments that confer it. Though it is a secondary effect of the sacraments, the character makes us members of the Christian religion and ministers of the Christian cultus; thus it introduces us into the family of Christ and incorporates us with Christ as Ruler and Head of the cultus of the New Testament. It constitutes in consequence a “moral ” title, a right to grace—i.e., to the chief effect of the sacraments—provided no obstacle is opposed by bad dispositions in the subject. The character, says St. Thomas, “disposes the soul directly and proximately to the fulfilling of things pertaining to divine worship : and because such things cannot be accomplished suitably without the help of grace— since, according to John iv. 24 they that adore God must adore Him in spirit and in truth—the divine bounty, by way of consequence, offers grace to those who receive the character, so that they may accomplish worthily the service to which they are deputed.”2 It may thus be said that incorporation with Christ by the character calls, as of right, for another, more intimate incor­ poration, deeper and more divine; namely incorporation with Christ by sacramental grace and charity. It may be added that ifit is a title to Christian grace, the character is at the same time a title to Christian suffering. Père F. Florand expresses surprise at the absence of this view in Chardon’s Croix de Jésus. We know, he says, that “our Christian stamp is two-fold. There is first of all that of grace wdiich is vital and living, since grace makes us act of ourselves, personally, as principal causes: in grace we are so many living Christs. But there is also another stamp w-hich comes of the character con­ ferred by certain sacraments. Doubtless this character is not a vital principle in us and docs not make us proper and principal causes of the sacerdotal efficacy of the acts we perform; in this respect we are no more than animated instruments, ministers. It is none the less true that, being added to grace, it strengthens our Christianity, and that too in the sense of the cross, since it is a certain participation of the priesthood of Christ which is inseparable from the cross ... If therefore it be granted that the Christian stamp that comes of grace demands the cross more directly because it brings us more immediately into the very life of the Crucified, it must also be recognized that the Christian stamp that comes of the sacramental character constitutes, on another plane, a new call for suffering. It fully achieves our entry into Christ by achieving our introduction into the redemptive plan which is also, in fact, a plan of 1 op. at., § 84, p. 560. 1 III, q. 63, a. 4, ad 1. > THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE reparation and of sanctification by the cross. Thus die baptized, the confinned, and the ordained are all of them orientated by their character towards the cross. It is true that our sufferings in this category will be chiefly exterior trials, humiliations and persecutions ; but trials and crosses all the same. There is nothing more astonishing than the astonishment of one baptized or con­ firmed or ordained when he finds himself faced with new sufferings. It is their absence that would be monstrous.”1 But the character does not merely create a title, a right, to the investiture of the soul with sacramental grace and Christian suffering. It plays an organic, a “physical” part in the production of grace. Schecben holds that at the first appearance of sacramental grace the character is, conjointly with the sacrament, the instrumental and ministerial cause of the grace: that at the moment when the pure sacramental sign (“sacramentum tan­ tum”) of Baptism, Confirmation and Order is outwardly conferred, the character is produced in the subject as a first effect of the sacrament,’ and in that very instant unites itself with the pure sacrament so as to be, with it, the physical instrumental cause of grace—grace being the ultimate and principal effect of the sacrament (res tantum). To argue thus does not amount to a denial that grace is the principal effect of the sacrament, or to a return to the early theory of St Thomas, abandoned in the Summa, according to which the sacrament would produce only a disposition calling for grace but would remain incapable of physically and directly causing grace itself. In favour of Scheeben’s view we might cite the text of the Summa in which St. Thomas, distinguishing, in the case of Penance, the “sacramen­ tum”, the “res et sacramentum” and the “res”, declares that “primum totum simul sumptum est causa secundi; primum autem et secundum sunt quodammodo causa tertii.”3 However it be, the Thomist theologians admit that at the reviviscence of sacramental grace, the character is utilised by the divine omnipotence as a physical instrumental cause of grace.1 b. The sacraments which confer no sacramental character—namely the Eucharist, Penance, Extreme Unction, and Matrimony—are nevertheless closely connected with the characters. Not only is their reception invalid for subjects not incorporated with Christ by the baptismal character5 ; but the grace which they communicate is not any grace whatsoever, but a grace proportioned to the dignity of a member of Christ, and drawing thence its fundamental significance. 3. On the subject of the causality of the sacramental power as regards redemptive grace, we have noted that if the direct and immediate end of this 1 Père Louis Chardon, O.P., La Croix dtjista. Introduction by R. P. F. Florand, O.P., Paris 1937, p. civ. 1 It is itself effect , but yet the sign of an ulterior effect: “ res et sacramentum 3 lll,q. 84,3. 1, ad 3. 4 The character is likened by St. Thomas to a form which produces its effect, namely grace as soon as any contrary dispositions are removed ÇIII, q. 69, a. 10). That, says Cajetan, is a mere comparison. 1 Without the baptismal character the other sacraments are received materially in venere entis but not validly, in genere sacramenti. ’ 72 THE POWER OF ORDER power is to dispose the soul to valid exercise of the acts of the Christian cultus, its consequence nevertheless is, in virtue of the divine liberality, to draw down into the soul the grace needed for the holy exercise of the cultus. It would therefore be doing violence to God’s established order, and moreover committing a sacrilege if, when receiving the power, we were to put an obstacle in the way of grace by bad dispositions. It is sacrilegious to confer a sacrament unworthily—and we know that the priest is not the sole minister of the sacraments: the spouses are the ministers in the case of Matrimony, and anybody, in case of necessity, can confer Baptism.1 But even if the minister is unworthy, the use of the power can remain valid: the sacrifice can be validly perpetuated for the salvation of those who desire to be united with it; the sacraments can be validly and, if received with the required dispositions, fruitfully conferred. The reason for this mystery is that the action of the minister and the sacramental rite taken together have only an instrumental part to play in conferring redemptive grace. It is not the sanctity of the minister, but the sanctity of Christ that appears in the world with the sacra­ mental rite, and comes to those who desire to receive it. Baptism administered by heretics, writes St. Augustine, will therefore be valid: “All say this, and I too say it: it is by no means only the just that can be ministers of this Judge [who is Jesus . . .]. A proud minister is a devil; but the gift of Christ that comes through him is not contaminated, it runs pure, it passes untouched to the fertile earth. This minister is made of stone, and the water that moistens him will never make him bear fruit; but the water passes through the runway of stone, it passes to the garden grass. In the stone runway it vivifies nothing, but in the gardens it gives fertility. The spiritual virtue of the sacrament is like light: on those on whom it falls it falls pure, and is in no way fouled by passing through foul things. . . . What Paul gives, what Peter gives, are the good things of Christ; even were Judas to give them, they are the good things of Christ.”2 The Christian cultus, its rites, its ministers, are nothing more, but also they arc nothing less, than the vehicles of redemption. And that is why, over and above its immediate effects—the uninterrupted exercise of the Christian cultus and the visible transmission of redemption to each successive generation—the sacramental power will draw unending sanctities in its train, not only for those who approach it with lively faith and purified heart, but even for those who know nothing of it, misconceive it, or even set themselves against it. 4. THE SACRAMENTAL POWER OF THE BAPTISED AND THE CONFIRMED The sacramental or sacerdotal power of the Church is disposed in degrees: the power of the baptized, that of the confirmed, and lastly the successive 1 St. Thomas however writes: “In case of necessity, when even a layman can baptize, he who* baptizes without being in a state of grace does not sin; for his intention is to do a service, not to act as a minister of the Church. But this solution would not apply to those sacraments which are less necessary than that of Baptism ” (III. q. 64, a. 6, ad 3). 1 In Evang. Joannis, tract. 5, nos. 15 and 18. 73 0 :ήΦ THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE degrees of the power of order with which the hierarchy begins; crowned, in the line of order, by the episcopal power. I. The validity ofBaptism does not require that those who confer it should themselves be consecrated. But this sacrament stamps the first of the Christian consecrations on the soul. If the baptized, as St. Paul declares, is incorpor­ ated with Christ, if he is associated with Christ on the cross as closely as a branch with its parent trunk (Rom. vi. ι-n), this is for two reasons. The first, and of course the better, is that he dies to sin and is born to the super­ natural life of grace; the second, which I want to emphasize here, is that he participates in a certain measure in the consecration which made Jesus the essential Priest of a cultus assured of divine approval till the end of time. The baptized, in fact, has power to co-operate liturgically in the sacrifice of the Mass, in which Jesus never ceases to offer the world to His Father: at Mass he can be not only a spectator but an actor and a participant: we see this, for example, in the collective form of the prayers of the Canon, or again in the ancient custom of dismissing the catechumens before the Offer­ tory. As to Christ’s privilege of communicating grace, the baptized have, to start with, something that can be referred to it, since they are able validly to receive the other Christian sacraments, which are so many channels of grace; and they even participate in it directly, since at their marriages, of which they themselves arc the ministers, they can be the instruments of grace. A second Christian consecration fulfils and deepens that of Baptism. It is given at Confirmation. The confirmed soul is first of all more congruously prepared for the valid reception of the other sacraments. It brings that soul this gift above all, that when it courageously confesses the faith it does so not simply as carrying out, with the help of a special sacramental grace, a per­ sonal moral duty; but as continuing in the world, in the name of the entire Church, that public, exterior, and liturgical witness to the truth that Christ came to bear, and which, from Pentecost onward, wall never cease.1 Thus, like the precious ointment that ran down from Aaron’s beard to the last fringes of his robe, the priesthood of Christ is diffused in its various degrees throughout the Church, among clergy and laity alike. Both, when they exercise the sacerdotal power they hold, are the principle, the efficient ministerial cause, of the Christian cultus. 1 The two capital texts of Scripture concerning the sacrament of Confirmation (Acts viii, 4-24; xix, 1-20) are discussed in the study u Confirmation dans la sainte Ecriture ” in the Dictionnaire dt thfologie calholique, col. 975-1026. The author, Mgr. Ruch, establishes that the communication of the Holy Spirit then made “ consecrates the disciple as a prophet of the New Times and enables him to bear witness to the Messiah according as circumstances dictate or the Saviour wills”. Being meant for all, “ the ministry' for which the gift of the Spirit makes the recipient apt carries no hierarchic grade, but involves nevertheless a participation in public functioni, Docs not the witness, jls such, speak in public and for the public? ” The extraordinary graces, such as the gift of tongues, are merely accidental effects; they are not received by all “ because all do not need them in order to bear witness ”, but they were given to some “ because the words and works of the public man should, at the outset more especially, be confirmed by the pow er of God”. The fact is that in the confirmed, as such, the confession of faith has rather the significance of an act of cultui than that of the gift of prophecy. 74 THE POWER OF ORDER 2. All souls in a state of grace owe the fact to the priesthood of Christ, grace being the supreme fruit of His priesthood. In this first general and indirect sense, these souls participate in the priesthood of Christ. They can already utter, with St. John, the praise of Jesus: “He hath loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us a kingdom and priests to God and his Father” (Apoc. i. 5-6). They can already hear the revelation of the prince of the Apostles: “But you are a chosen priesthood, a kingly priesthood, a holy nation, a purchased people; that you may declare his virtues who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light” (1 Peter ii. 9)? But souls who, by the consecration of Baptism and then by that of Con­ firmation, have been dedicated to the Christian cultus, participate also directly in the priesthood of Christ. They are able to play an efficacious part in the great redemptive liturgy instituted by Christ as Head of the definitive Testament, and perpetuated by the ministry of succeeding generations. When Scripture says of the baptized that they arc marked with the seal of the Holy Spirit (Eph. i. 13; iv. 30) that must be understood first of the seal of the Divinity who dwells in them, and then of the created signature of grace which prepares them for the life of glory in the heavenly Kingdom; but it can be understood also of a second created sealing, of a spiritual imprint, of the power to carry out sacerdotally the first acts of the cultus in the Kingdom of God upon earth, the Church militant. So also when the Scriptures say in various ways that the baptized are “incorporate with Christ so as to live with His life” that no doubt means first and foremost that they partake by grace of the inner holiness of His heart; but it may mean furthermore—and Christian antiquity has always so understood it—that they are enabled to enter into valid and efficacious union with the sacrifice in His Blood by which He finally willed to save mankind. 5. CONSECRA TION TO THE CULTUS AND MORAL SANCTITT The idea that all Christians, clergy and laity together, are consecrated persons with a mission to perpetuate a cultus, a liturgy—the idea that a consecration, a sacramental power, incorporates us as members, ministerial organs, into Christ, Ruler and Head of the cultus of the New Testament— this idea is secondary (the primary one being that of our incorporation into 1 “ In a sense all the sacraments bring some participation of the priesthood of Christ because they dispense some of its fruits; not all of them however give the power to do or to receive anything from the cultus of which Christ is priest, but those only that impress a character on the soul ” (St. Thomas, III, q. 63, a. 6, ad 1). If it be admitted that the two texts of the Apocalypse: “ He hath made us a kingdom and priests to God and his Father ” (L 6) and “ thou hast made us to our God a kingdom and priests ” (v. 10) refer, not to each particular soul but to the Christian people as a whole, we could say, as Cajetan does, that in these texts the word “ priests ” is already taken in its proper sense to designate the power of order, cf. Cajetan, Jentaculum tertium. The same applies to 1 Peter ii. 9. While 1 Peter ii. 5 would, on the contrary, designate the priest­ hood in the metaphorical sense. 75 Wi 11 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE Christ by charity), but it is nevertheless essential and fundamental to the Christian revelation. The ancient world everywhere and always understood the need of offering to God certain dedicated and consecrated actions and things, through dedicated and consecrated persons. But it did not succeed cither in plumbing the idea of consecration to its depths or in keeping it free from the worst corruptions. Before the Incarnation took place, before the substantial unction of the Divinity had come to consecrate the Saviour of men and make Him the High Priest of a new cultus, sacerdotal consecrations could be no more than figures, pure signs; they represented powers of a moral and juridical nature conferred by simple designation, by simple delegation— even if recourse were had to the ceremony of anointing. This at least appears to have been so in the more favourable cases, under the natural law or the Mosaic law. But in the pagan world, by a monstrous perversion the idea of the “dedicated” or “consecrated” gradually usurped the place of the idea of moral goodness and began to supplant it. So sinister an aberration might have compromised irremediably the truth contained in the idea of conse­ cration if Christianity had not come to purify it, save it, and raise it to its highest perfection. In fact, at the moment when the Word, becoming flesh, had consecrated the Messiah by the unction of His divinity, filling His soul with the most precious gifts, and making Him at once Ruler and Head of a new outpouring of grace and sanctity, and of a new and permanent cultus, it became manifest first that moral sanctity and sacramental conse­ cration are both—though on different grounds—essential to Christianity; and, moreover, that the consecration by which we are incorporated as members and instruments1 with Christ, Ruler and Head of the cultus, is no longer a simple jurisdictional power conferred by delegation, but a physical, spiritual, sacerdotal power conferred by contact with Christ, a contact mysteriously effected through the sacraments that confer a character. The dissident Oriental Churches have retained a very clear and fully appreciative notion of the consecration conferred by the sacraments. Protestantism, by an error directly contrary to that of the pagans, attempted to eliminate the notion of consecration and to substitute that of moral holiness; in this it gravely misconceived the essence of Christianity which docs not oppose the two notions but reconciles them.2 Still, as we have said, 1 The human nature of Christ is conjoined to the Person of the Word in the order of being. Incorporation with Christ makes us separated instruments of the Person of the Word in the order of being, and conjoined with Him only in the order of action. ’“The sign of Christian Baptism, when it remains unaltered, suffices even among heretics to confer a ccnsecralion, though not participation in eternal life" (St. Augustine, Epist. XCVIII^ 5). To die three consecrations which arc characters we could, as we have said, link the physical modifications produced in the baptized by reception of the sacraments of Matrimony and Extreme Unction. Their negative rôle will be to prevent the valid repetition of these two sacraments during respectively, the life of the spouses or the continuance of the same danger of death. Their positive rôle will be to serve as instruments of the divine omnipotence in die event of the reviviscence of these sacraments, and also to consecrate Christians temporarily or momentarily for the duties of marriage or the struggles of the death agony. THE POWER OF ORDER the perpetuity of the Christian cultus continues none the less to be beneficial even to those who misconceive it or pass it by. However, although all members of the Church, clerics and laymen alike, partake of the sacerdotal power of Christ, they are not all in Holy Orders. It is with the various levels and consecrations arising from the sacrament of Holy Order that the hierarchy begins.1 III. THE POWER OF ORDER, OR THE HIERARCHIC SACRAMENTAL POWER I. THE EXISTENCE .AND NATURE OF THE POWER OF ORDER i. For the provisional cultus of the Old Law, with its sacrifices and its ceremonies which were no more than shadows and figures, the economy of die Word made flesh substituted the definitive cultus of the New Law, with its sacrifice and its sacraments, which arc truth and reality because they contain Christ and the grace of Christ. Although all Christians receive the power to participate validly in this cultus, which brings into the world the sources of life from which each may drink in proportion to the intensity of his desire, this power nevertheless has degrees. Besides the power given by Baptism, and that given by Confirmation, there is a third power coming from Holy Orders2 and not given to all.3 This is the power to consecrate the true Body and true Blood of Our Lord, and to forgive or retain sins,4 so that the priesthood of Christ on the cross shall never fail the world.3 This power, being a ministerial power,® can be validly exercised even by the unworthy.7 It resides in the soul in the manner of an indelible spiritual mark,8 so that the man who is once a priest can never again become a layman,9 and the sacrament which confers this power 1 The consecrations of Baptism and of Confirmation are participations of the priesthood of Christ; but since they arc conferred on all they cannot be degrees of a sacramental hierarchy. This latter begins only with the sacrament of Holy Order, and with it of course the differences of level. This said, it is easy to understand the words of a dissident Russian theologian: “ The laity have their place and value in the Church as well as the clergy. The lay state is not to be defined nega­ tively as the mere absence of ecclesiastical order—it is rather a special order, conferred in the sacrament of unction ” (Discourse of P. Serge Bulgakov, to the Congress of Churches at Lausanne, 1927). Let us say with greater exactitude that the lay state involves, not the absence of the sacerdotal or sacramental power, but the absence of the power of Order. It supposes die first degrees of the sacra­ mental power, but not the first degree of Order, which is die beginning of the hierarchy. * Denz., 852. * ibid., 853, 920. 4 ibid., 961. 4 ibid., 938. * ibid., 855. 7 ibid., 920. bid., 852. ibid., 960, 964. According to the Reformers, ordinadon was not a sacrament conferring a sacramental power, a consecration, but a simple dcsignadon of ministers by the Church, ministers 77 r THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE cannot be repeated.1 That is the essence of the doctrine of the Council of Trent on the nature of the power of order. 2. The main elements of this doctrine are visible in Scripture. In the first place the Scriptures show us Christ conferring powers upon some only of his followers. On the evening of the Last Supper He commanded the Apostles to do the wonderful thing that He had just done, that is to say to change the bread into His Body and the wane into His Blood and to continue to do it until He should come again (Luke xxii. 19 ; 1 Cor. xi. 24-25). Before His Ascension Christ sent the disciples, as the Father had sent Him, with power to remit or retain sins (John xx. 21-23). All power had been given Him in heaven and upon earth, and so He would command the Aposdes to baptize all nations till the world should come to an end (Mark xvi. 15; Matt, xxviii. 18-20); and though it be true that anyone can be the extra­ ordinary' minister of Baptism, yet the same traditional teaching that tells us so tells us also that the ordinary ministers of Baptism are the ordained. Scripture shows us, in vivid vignettes, that there are liturgical acts not to be carried out indifferendy by all Christians. Philip the deacon baptizes the Samaritans; but he cannot bring down the Holy Ghost on them by imposition of hands: that is a power reserved to the Apostles, who proceeded to send Peter and John into Samaria (Acts viii. 14-17). At Corinth, it is another Aposde, Paul, who imposes hands on the neophytes to give them the Holy Spirit (Acts xix. 6). St. James commands the sick to ask for the presbyters of the Church to receive from their hands the anointing with oil in the name of the Lord (v. 14). Finally, Scripture speaks of the transmission and permanence of the power of order. “Neglect not the grace that is in thee by prophecy, with imposition of the hands of the priesthood” says St. Paul to Timothy (1 Tim. who could, at will, become laymen again. That consecration which the Protestants of the Reforma­ tion took away from the priests, the modern liberal Protestants take away from Jesus Himself. They no longer believe that He stands before God as the Priest of all mankind. It was, they say, only in the minds of certain of His disciples that he was the High Priest according to the order of Mclchisedech, that His death was a redemptive sacrifice, that He has washed away our sins in His Blood, that the Last Supper is the memorial of a sacrifice, cf. A. Réville, Jésus de Nazareth, 1897» vol- H, p. 350, et scq.; A. Sabatier, La doctrine de Γexpiation et son Solution historique, 1903; J. Réville, Les origines de Γeucharistie, 1908; Harnack, Dos Ifricn des Chrislentums, 1920, p. 98 et seq. This last is not the least categorical, but the most adroit, of them all: “ If we penetrate into history we recognize that the world’s salvation comes from the sufferings of the just and the innocent, in the sense that it is not words but acts, nor even acts but acts of oblation, nor even acts of oblation but only the voluntary gift of life itself, which decides the great moments of historical progress. In this sense, I believe that in so far as any theory of substitution can seem acceptable to us, few among us will fail to recognize the inner justice and truth of a drama such as that of Isaiah liii: Surely he hath borne our infirmities and carried our sorrows. None hath greater loce than he who lays down his life for his friends. That is how the death of Christ was understood from the beginning. The more delicate is a man’s moral sense the more surely he will discover in history', whenever some great thing is done, the part played by the suffering of substitution; and the more lessons he will know how to draw from it. Did Luther in his cloister fight only for himself, was it not for all of us that he inwardly battled and bled in the cause of the religion confided to his hands? But in the Cross of Jesus Christ mankind could recognize the pow er of a purity and of a love so proven by death lhat it could never be forgotten, and the experience marked a new epoch in our history/’ 1 Denz., 852. 78 THE POWER OF ORDER iv. 14). Timothy had been designated by prophecy (cf. 1 Tim. i. 18), but the imposition of hands had given him a permanent gift. Hence St. Paul’s exhortation: “Stir up the grace of God which is in thee by the imposition of my hands” (2 Tim. i. 6). Hence Timothy’s power to impose hands in his turn on others, but not without due caution (1 Tim. v. 22). Titus undoub­ tedly acted in the same way since Paul had left him in Crete to establish presbyters in every city, to be bishops without reproach, dispensing the good things of God and watching over purity of doctrine (Tit. i. 5-9). A power to offer the sacrifice and to confer the sacraments of the New Law, a power coming from Christ, transmitted by the Apostles and their successors, not to be given a second time to the same person, but to be “stirred up” since it resides permanently in the soul, and setting up a difference of rank, a hierarchy—there we have the power of order as it appears in the Scriptures. 3. This doctrine is echoed by St. Augustine. Some of the Donatists thought that although apostates remain baptized, it is otherwise with the power of baptizing. St. Augustine replies that both the power received in Baptism and the power to confer Baptism (solemn)1 are equally ineffaceable: “Both arc sacraments, both are conferred by a consecration: the first when one baptizes, the second when one ordains. That is why it is forbidden to repeat them in the Catholic Church. When dignitaries coming out of schism and renouncing their errors have been received into her once more in peace, and when it seems good to allow them to exercise their old functions, they are not rc-ordained. For Order, like Baptism, has remained in them intact. What was found evil in them was the schism, which has been repaired by the peace of unity; but not the sacraments, which always keep their nature.” 2 Thus for St. Augustine the power of order is an ineffaceable sacra­ mental character, which exists and remains efficacious even in the unworthy. With St. Augustine, the doctrine of the sacramental characters becomes firmly established in theology. But St. Augustine was no innovator; he merely renders explicit the traditional doctrine. Between Scripture and himself an uninterrupted chain of witnesses, passing through the Didache, St. Clement of Rome and St. Ignatius of Antioch, shows us an ordained hierarchy celebrating the Christian cultus, and this, being a cultus in truth and reality and no longer in shadows and figures, demands a special spiritual consecration. When Tertullian—who had at first rightly blamed the heretics for making over the sacerdotal power to laymen, not by a “conse­ cration” but by a simple “injunction” {Idicis sacerdotalia munera injungunt)— came later to maintain that the priesthood (and by this he meant the power of order) belonged to all men, and that laymen could validly celebrate the Eucharist and remit sins—then he himself became the innovator.3 1 The deacon is the extraordinary minister and the priest the ordinary minister of “ solemn " Baptism, that is to say of Baptism conferred according to the prescriptions and ceremonies of the ritual (CW. Jut. Can., can. 737, §2; 738, §1; 741). 3 Contra Epistolam Parmeniani, lib, II, no. 28. ’ cf. P. Batiffol, L'Église naissante et le catholicisme, Paris 1911, p. 351. 79 I I I THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE 2. THE DIVISIONS AND DEGREES OF THE PO WER OF ORDER The divisions set up by divine institution appear in the historical docu­ ments well before others of ecclesiastical institution. They comprise the three principal degrees of the power of order. A. The Divisions of the Power of Order I. The power of order that Christ left in the world to assure the continuity of the chief acts of the Christian cultus is virtually multiple. That is why, besides the plenary realization found in its highest degree, there are lower realizations in which its virtue is participated. These different realizations of the divine power of order mark the degrees of the hierarchy.1 Three of these are of divine institution: the episcopate, the presbytcrate, and the diaconate.* The episcopate carries with it, besides the plenary power to change the bread into Christ’s proper Body, the plenary power to sanctify His Mystical* or Social Body, by preparing the faithful to approach the Eucharist. The presbytcrate gives the plenary power to consecrate the proper Body of Christ and a merely partial power to sanctify the Mystical Body of Christ.4 The diaconate gives only a partial power whether over the proper Body or the Mystical Body of Christ. The last of these three divinely instituted powers, the diaconate, contains in an eminent manner other lower powers, which gradually made their appearance in the course of time, as the divine cultus developed. The subdiaconatc was instituted, and the various Minor Orders.® Christ is their Author in the sense that He alone gave the power of the diaconate to His 1 “ Hoc sacramentum datur principaliter ad actus aliquos agendos. Et ideo, secundum diver­ sitatem actuum, oportet quod ordinis sacramentum distinguatur ” (St. Thomas, Suppi., q. 37, a. i, ad 1). “ Tota enim plenitudo sacramento hujus est in uno ordine, scilicet sacerdotio, sed in aliis est quaedam participatio ordinis ” (ibid., ad 2). lTbe Council of Trent did not intend to define that all three of these Orders arc of divine institution, so that we cannot attempt to establish the fact by citing the words of the Council: “If any one shall say that there is not in the Catholic Church a hierarchy instituted by divine ordin­ ance and comprising bishops, priests and ministers, let him be anathema ” (Session XXIII, can. 6: Denz. 966). Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that this is the teaching of the Code of Canon Law: “ By virtue of a divine institution, the sacred hierarchy comprises in the line of order bishops, priests and ministers ...” (Can. 108, §3). See below Excursus II on some recent views on the sacrament of order. ’ The term “ Mystical Body ” was first used in the ninth century' to designate the sacramental Body, the eucharistie Body, of Christ; then, since the twelfth century', to designate its proper effect, namely the “ Body which is the Church cf. Henri de Lubac, S.J., Corpus Mysticum, Γeucharistie ft ΓEglise au moyen age, Paris 1944, p. 15. 4 The episcopate and the prabyterate, in which are equally exercised the principal act of the power of order, which is to consecrate the real Body of Christ, are often brought together under the name of the priesthood primi et secundi Gradus. 1 “ In primitiva Ecclesia, propter paucitatem ministrorum, omnia inferiora ministeria diaconis committebantur . . . niliilominus erant omnes praedictae potestates, sed implicite, in una diaconi potestate. Sed postea ampliatus est cultus divinus; et Ecclesia, quod implicite habebat in uno ordini, explicite tradidit in diversis. Et secundum hoc dicit Magister ... quod Ecclesia alios ordines sibi instituit ” (St. Thomas, IVSent., dist. 24, q. 2. a. 1, quaest. 2, ad 2: cf. Suppi., q. 37, a. 2, ad 2). 8O 7■■■ THE POWER OF ORDER Church. But the unfolding of this power is of ecclesiastical origin. It was effected in the Latin Church as early as the third century.1 However, the Church is entitled to bring back to unity at one period what she has dis­ tinguished at another.2 2. Scripture shows us in the sacred ministers of the primitive Church, the three degrees of the power of order, which, according to the authoritative teaching, arc of divine institution.3 The episcopate, which carries not only the power of order, but also the power of transmitting orders to others, was conferred by St. Paul on Timothy, who was to impose hands in Iris turn; and on Titus who was charged with the duty of establishing the hierarchy in the cities of Crete (i Tim. v. 22; Tit. i. 5-9). Were the “presbyters” mentioned in Scripture, or some of them, only laymen? Various writers think so. But some, at any rate, had the power of order. Paul and Barnabas, after prayer and fasting, set them at the head of the Churches of Asia (Acts xiv. 22). If these presbyters imposed hands on Timothy (1 Tim. iv. 14) that, no doubt, could only be because hands had already been imposed on themselves. They were to bring the sacramental anointing, which remits sins, to the sick (Jas. v. 14). A more difficult question arises: were they simple priests or genuine bishops? Scripture in fact calls them bishops, episcopal·, for example the presbyters of Ephesus whom St. Paul had called to Miletus, were “bishops ruling the Church of God” (Acts xx. 28); and the presbyters whom Titus ordained were to be bishops without blame (Tit. i. 5-7). The question cannot be answered with any certainty.1 “Probably the same answer would not apply to every case. 1 Λ letter written in 251 by Pope Cornelius to Fabrius, Bishop of Antioch, shows that the Roman Church then recognized priests, deacons, sub-deacons, acolytes, exorcists, lectors and doorkeepers, cf. Dcnz. 45. 3 It was the teaching of St. Thomas (Suppl., q. 37, a. 1 and 2) that the sub-diaconatc and the Minor Orders were true degrees of the power of order. It would appear that such was also the teaching of the Council of Florence: when speaking of the way in which Orders are conferred, the Council mentions not only the presbytcrate and diaconate but also the sub-diaconatc and other Orders (Dcnz. 701). But it would seem that the Church’s intention has been modified since. It could be held that by the Apostolic Constitution on the Holy Orders of the Diaconate, Presby­ tcrate and Episcopate (30 Nov. 1947), His Holiness Pope Pius XII, by returning to the primitive rite of the imposition of hands an essential and exclusive part in the ordination, also reduced to the rank of simple sacramentals the sub-diaconatc and the Minor Orders, which arc conferred without the imposition of hands. Sec Excursus II: Some Recent Views on the Sacrament of Order (no· 9)· 1 In the first days of the Church wc have to recognize, alongside the hierarchy, a missionary and itinerant organization composed of prophets, doctors, etc., and engaged in apostolic work. cf. P. Batiffol, Études d'histoire et de théologie positive, Paris 1920, p. 260. 4 An indication of Jesus' intention to distinguish between bishops and priests later on, could be found in the two missions mentioned in the Gospel: that of the twelve Apostles, who were to be succeeded by bishops, and that of the seventy-two disciples, who were to be succeeded by simple priests. (“ Cum sacerdotes succedant in locum septuagintaduorum discipulorum, episcopi vero in locum duodecim apostolorum, ut dicitur in glossa ” (St. Thomas, Contra Impugnantes Dei Cultum et Religionem)), For the mission of the seventy-two was not merely transitory: “ Behold I have given you power to tread upon serpents and scorpions and upon all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you ” (Luke x. 19). Père Lagrange writes: “ But although the disciples had gone before Jesus on this occasion, they will have to carry on His work after Him. Hence the Master bestows 8l Il · ι Γ·ΐΜ>ι THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE I ·. St. John Chrysostom, and other authors after him, believed that whenever several bishops are mentioned in the same city, as at Ephesus and Philippi, they could only be simple priests. Pétau on the other hand considers that most of them were bishops.”1 As to the deacons, if on occasion they were put to serve tables, they too were sacred ministers. The Acts represent them as consecrated by the imposition of the hands of the Apostles (vi. 6), and as ministers of Baptism (viii. 38). . 3. Outside Scripture the earliest documents of Apostolic times witness that the power of order was subject to several degrees. The Didache, speaking of the eucharistie sacrifice announced by Malachias, adds that bishops and deacons worthy of the Lord will have to be chosen to offer it (xiv and xv). The Epistle of St. Clement of Rome (xl. 2-xli. 1), composed towards the year 95, insists on the distinct rôles of the clergy and laity (this word appears here for the first time) in the celebration of the cultus: “The offerings and liturgies should be carried out not in any optional or unordered way, but, as the Master commands, at determinate occasions and hours. His own sovereign will has determined where and by whom they are to be carried out, so that all may be done in a holy manner according to His good pleasure ... To the high priest [Christ? the Bishop?] are reserved the proper liturgies; to the presbyters a special place is assigned, for the laites [deacons] there are distinct services; the layman is bound by the precepts peculiar to the laity.”2 Some years later St. Ignatius of Antioch praises, for example, the Trallians on them as a permanent gift the power which they have just used so well. Before sending out His disciples He had already laid the foundations of the hierarchy involving the principle of obedience and discipline by which the Church is governed: ‘ He that heareth you, hearcth Me, and He that despiseth you despiseth Me. And He that despiseth Me despiseth Him that sent Me ’ ” (The Gospel of Jésus Christ, London 1938, voL II, p. 6), 1J. Tixeront, L'ordre et les ordinations, Paris 1925, p. 61. According to Batiffol the name of “ presbyters ” would, at the outset, have been used alike for laymen and for the ordained. The liturgical and social functions were reserved for deacons and for episcopoi. The episcopii or presbyter­ bishops had the power of bishops. They formed a college in each Church. At the death of the Apostles the plural episcopate was dismembered, so as to give birth to the sovereign episcopate of the bishop, and the subordinate priesthood of the priests. However, the plural episcopate subsisted for a long time at Alexandria: the whole presbyterium was composed of bishops; but only one of them, designated by election, exercised the power of ordaining, cf. Études d'histoire et de théologie positive, Paris 1920, pp. 266 and 280. But Duchesne observes that if tilings began in more than one place with the collegiate episcopate, the unitary episcopate was not unknown to the primitive institutions; we find it in the mother-church at Jerusalem, at /Xntioch, Rome, Lyons, Corinth, Athens, and in Crete (The Early History of the Church, London 1914, vol. I, pp. 63-9). See Excursus II, no. 5. 1 According to St. Clement, God sends Christ, who sends the Apostles; and these, having made trial of their first-fruits, institute them as bishops and deacons for the believers, laying down this rule, that after their death other tried men shall succeed in the same ministry. Those who have thus been placed in charge by the Apostles, or later on by other eminent persons with the appro­ bation of the Church, cannot justly be deprived of the ministry (XL1I, 2-4; XLIV, 2-3). Evid­ ently then the community approves but does not institute; and hence it cannot dismiss. If Clement blames the Corinthians for having unjustly dismissed blameless presbyters, he nowhere says that he recognizes any right to dismiss unworthy presbyters. And even then a dismissal would deprive them of the exercise of their functions, not of the radical power to exercise them 82 •< —i - THE POWER OF ORDER for being obedient “to their bishop as to Jesus Christ”, “to the presbyterium as to the Apostles of Jesus Christ”, and he recommends the deacons, “super­ intendents of the mysteries of Jesus Christ” and “servants of the Church of God”, to be pleasing to all (ii. 1-3). He adds: “Let all reverence the deacons as Jesus Christ, the bishop as the image of the Father, the presbyters as the council of God and the assembly of the Apostles. Without these there is no Church” (iii. 1). Bishops, priests, deacons—such, in the line of order, in virtue of divine institution, already clearly indicated in the earliest magisterium of the Church, are the degrees of the hierarchy. We must now consider for a moment each degree in particular. B. The Degrees of the Power of Order i : The priests. The sacramental or sacerdotal power of priests is two-fold. They have power over the proper Body of Christ when they consecrate the Eucharist; and they have power over the Mystical Body of Christ when they prepare the faithful to approach the Eucharist. When he celebrates the Eucharist, which is at the same time the sacrifice of the New Law and the sacrament of the Body and Blood of the Saviour, the priest does not say: “This is the Body ofJesus, this is the Blood ofJesus.” To make clear that the rite of the Last Supper is being reproduced not merely similarly but identically, and to make clear moreover that at this tremendous moment his own personal mediation is purely instrumental, the priest, in Christ’s name, repeats Christ’s words: This is My Body, This is My Blood. “Of die consecration,” says St. Ambrose, “what are the words? Whose are the words? They are the words of the Lord Jesus. All the words that precede them are the priest’s. He praises God. He prays for the people, for kings, for the neighbour; but when he comes to this venerable mystery [venerabile sacramentum], then he uses his own words no longer but the words of Christ. The mystery is fulfilled by the words of Christ.”1 The supreme function of the priest as priest is thus to disappear in the presence of Christ, whom he offers to God and gives to the world. His maxim should be that of the Precursor: “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John iii. 30). The secondary' function of priests concerns not the individual or real Body of Christ, but His social or Mystical Body. It consists in leading the 1 De Sacramentis, lib. IV, cap. 4; P.L. XVI, col. 440. (It is well known that Dom Germain Morin restores the De Sacramentis to St. Ambrose.) This distinction, emphasized by St. ?\mbrose, between the words uttered by the priest on behalf of Jesus, and those he utters on behalf of the Church, corresponds to the two parts played by the priest in the celebration of Mass. As regards the validity of the sacrifice the priest at the moment of consecration is the minister, the instrument, through whom Christ Himself acts as true God and true Man. As regards the application of the sacrifice the priest acts as minister of the Church which partakes, according to her devotion, of the infinite value of die sacrifice; it is as minister of the Church that he disposes, in a special measure, of the fruits of the sacrifice of the Mass, for various specified good intentions. 83 » THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE people of God to the Eucharist. For this purpose1 they are given the power of cleansing souls, whether from sin by the sacrament of Penance—“As the Father hath sent me, I also send you . . . whose sins you shall forgive, they arc forgiven them: whose sins you shall retain, they arc retained” (John xx. 21-23)’—or from the last consequence of sin by the sacrament of Extreme Unction: “Is any man sick among you? Let him bring in the priests of the Church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord” (Jas. v. 14). They are the ordinary ministers of solemn Baptism. .And they can be extraordinary ministers of Confirmation, for they the radical power to confer it,3 and the Sovereign Pontiff I.KVKX' 1 “ Penance and Extreme Unction prepare man worthily to receive the body of Christ ” (St. Thomas, III, q. 65, a. 3). Note that a single power may have several distinct acts ordered to one another. Fire heats, and also expands. Thus the power of order, which is a power to consecrate, carries also a power to baptize, and—granting the jurisdiction of the Church—to absolve. The power to absolve, in its turn, has two subordinate acts: it is a power to take cognizance of the sin and then to pronounce the sentence that binds or looses. Hence the two keys—that is to say, the two powers—of the sacrament of Penance, the key of knowledge and the key of power. This tradi­ tional doctrine of the two key’s, summed up by St. Thomas Aquinas (Suppl., q. 17, a. 2, ad 1 ; art. 3: and ZFCan. Gm., 72), is illustrated by Dante in the ninth Canto of the Purgatorio·. . . . “ traxse due chiavi. L'una era d’oro e Paîtra d'argento: Pria con la bianca, e poscia con la gialla Fece alb porta si ch’io fui contento.” * Protestants were for a long lime obliged to maintain that according to this text sins are re­ mitted by the simple preaching of the Gospel, and not by any judgment passed on the dispositions of the sinner, as happens in the sacrament of Penance. The Apostles preached ; those who believed were forgiven, the others not. But, as Père Lagrange notes, “ What then becomes of the apostolic power to bind and to loose? We do not think that those cxegetes who make a point of being critical will be very long content with this Lutheran subterfuge ” (Évangile selon saint Jean, 1925, p. 516). To-day it is much more readily granted that the Catholic interpretation is correct, but then the passage is supposed to have a flavour of paganism. When Protestantism comes to sec that the Gospel that speaks of “ worship in spirit and in truth ”, of the flesh ” that profiteth nothing ”, is. the same Gospel that speaks of the Word made flesh, of the water that regenerates, of the Body and Blood that is meat and drink, of the sentence that remits or retains sins, that is to say of the Incar­ nation, Baptism, the Eucharist and Penance, then it will either have to change some of its teaching or mutilate the text of St. John. 1 “ The concession, the delegation, by which the Pope authorizes a simple priest to confer Con­ firmation and Minor Orders, is not meant to give the physical power to dispense these sacraments, but simply to furnish the necessary circumstances for their valid dispensing. In virtue of his episcopal power, the bishop has a divine title to confer Confirmation; the priest, in virtue of his sacerdotal power, can confer it if he is authorized so to do by the Sovereign Pontiff. The physical power of the priest cannot be validly exercised save in certain moral conditions—authorization, juridical dele­ gation, and so forth—but the power of the bishop is free from any’ such restrictions. For example, the priest as such has the physical power to administer the sacrament of Penance; but he can exercise it only if he has jurisdiction. Need we be astonished to find in the extraordinary minister of Confirmation what we find in the ordinary minister of Penance? Thus the sacerdotal pow-er makes its possessor the ordinary minister of the Eucharist and of Penance, and the minister of Confirmation and Minor Orders extraordinarily, that is to say in dependence on delegation from the Sovereign Pontiff” (John of St. Thomas, III, q. 63; disp. 25, a. 2, no. 98; vol. IX, p. 345). The bishops are the ordinary ministers of Confirmation; for it was the Apostles, Peter, John, Paul, who are represented in Acts as imposing hands: Peter and John on the Samaritans (viii), Paul on the Ephesians (xix). The delegation necessary to enable simple priests to confer Confirma­ tion validly is generally possessed by the Oriental Catholics, and even, as I shall say further on, by the Oriental dissidents, cf. below p. 506. The Decree Spiritus Sancti Munera issued by the Sacred. 84 THE POWER OF ORDER will sometimes exempt them from the reservation of the valid administration of this sacrament to bishops alone. 2: The lower ministers. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit the Apostles detached the diaconate from the priesthood. The Church, on her own initiative, was similarly to detach the lower powers of the sub-diaconate and the Minor Orders from the diaconate. The priesthood, defined by its principal act, is the power to celebrate the sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Our Lord. The diaconate and the lower orders, if defined by their principal act, as St. Thomas Aquinas defines them,1 appear as the powers to prepare, remotely or proximately, the eucharistie sacrifice. The raison d'etre of the power of order and of its hierarchized participations is thus, above all else, continually to present to the world the redemption effected by Christ on the cross. 3: The bishops. The most sublime of powers is the power to consecrate the Eucharist; and this the priest does. In the strict line of sacramental power here in question, what more does the bishop do? In what sense is the episcopate the fullness of the priesthood? When a priest is consecrated bishop, it is not that he receives intensively the power to consecrate the Eucharist, but that he receives extensively the power to prepare the people for the Eucharist; not the direct power over what is called the proper Body of Christ (hence the bishop is not superior to the priest as regards the principal act of the power of order) but the lateral power over what is called the Mystical Body of Christ. And hence the bishop is superior to the priest for the secondary act of the power of order.2 The priest is the minister of Baptism, Penance, Extreme Unction, and even, extra­ ordinarily, of Confirmation and of certain orders. But the bishop is the ordinary minister of Confirmation and ordination: he has an essentially unrestricted power to administer these two sacraments.3 The sacerdotal power in the bishop being consecrated is not strengthened as to its primary act, the consecration of the Eucharist; it is expanded on the plane of its secondary act, in this sense—that it is in its essence unrestricted in the line of an act which is, itself, less lofty from the point of view of intension: the act of conferring Confirmation and Holy Orders. Add, if we may say of the sacerdotal power what is said of living tilings, that they attain their per­ fection only when ready to reproduce themselves, it follows that the plenitude Congregation for the Sacraments on 14 Sept. 1946 grants to parish priests, parochial vican and certain other clergy the power of validly and 1 ici tly conferring the sacrament of Confirmation on those of the faithful who arc in grave danger of death from illness (Acta Apost. Sedis, 1946, pp. 349 ct scq.). 1 Suppl., q. 37, a. 2. - The episcopal power is higher than the sacerdotal power as to the secondary act of the priest, which is to prepare the people of God to receive the Eucharist, but not as to the first act, which is to consecrate the Body of Christ (Su Thomas, IV Sent., dist. 24, q. 3, a. 2, quaest. I; cf. Suppl., q. 40, a. 4). 3 It is a debated question, whether the Pope can delegate a simple priest to confer not only the sub-diaconate and diaconate, but also the priesthood itself. It would seem that the answer is affirmative. See Excursus II, no. 7. THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE of the priesthood resides, not in the priest—though in consecrating the Eucharist he performs the supreme act of the Christian cultus—but in the bishop.1 3. THE RÔLE OF THE POWER OF ORDER IN THE CHURCH I. While the Scriptures remain intact they will always witness that Christ was the Priest consecrated by God, first to offer to God a perfect sacrifice, a sacrifice to be commemorated to the end of time by the ministers admitted to participation in His sovereign sacerdotal power; and next to procure a redemption for the world, a redemption to be applied to human beings individually by the ministry of the sacraments. Christ’s consecration was not as that of the kings, prophets, or priests who preceded Him. It came from the fact that He was the Word made flesh, and that the fullness of the Godhead, dwelling in Him as a permanent unction, not only sanctified Him substantially, making all His actions theandric,1 but also poured into His soul the source of the sacerdotal power, and the source of created sanctity; whence the double consecration that ineffably prepared Him for His mission of saving mankind. “So Christ also did not glorify himself that he might be made a high priest : but he that said unto him, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee” (Heb. v. 5). Jesus therefore is and will remain Priest, in a sense in which no other will ever be priest. Those who to-day are called by that name are no more than the vehicles of His irreplaceable priesthood, the dispensers of His redemption, the channels by which He has willed it to be brought down to the people. In the priests of the New Law the power of order is a permanent quality, not in the least self-activated, but always needing, as every instrument does, to receive from Christ the virtue that shall actualize, elevate and apply it to the production of its effect. It is the divine power that uses the power of order. It is not—as we are told by Protestants, from the liberals to Karl Barth, and 141 On this point there can be no controversy, that the episcopate, envisaged as the plenitude of the priesthood, is and remains.a sacrament. The question debated by the theologians is whether the episcopate is a sacrament adequately distinct from the simple priesthood, and whether it imprints on the soul a new character ... Many of the old theologians, while admitting that episcopal ordina­ lion extends and heightens the sacerdotal character by giving the bishop powers which the priest has not, nevertheless deny that the episcopate is an order distinct from the priesthood. That was the view of the great scholastics; after the Council of Trent the Thomist school as a whole remained faithful to it . . . But modem theologians and canonists, especially after Bcllarmine, have taken up a position clearly opposed’* (A. Michel, art. “ Ordre”, Diet, de thiol. cath., col. 1383). The same author adds: “ It is of no importance from a dogmatic standpoint whether one admits seven or eight orders,” and in this connection he cites a passage from Benedict XIV (Epist. In postremo, 20th Oct. 1756, §17) : “ Let no one forbid discussion as to whether the episcopate is an order distinct from the prabyterate, whether the character impressed by episcopal consecration differs from the presbyteral, or whether it is only an extension of it.” See Excursus II, no. 3. ’That is to say, divino-human. All the acts that came from the human nature of Jesus can be called theandric. Even hypothetically supposing them not to have been supernaturalized by habitual grace, the divinity of His Person would give them a dignity tliat was infinite. But the term might be reserved for those acts alone which Christ’s human nature produces as the instru­ ment of His divinity. 86 THE POWER OF ORDER along with these by all who regard the sacraments as magical and the Incarnation as a pagan cult—it is not the power of order that “uses” and “captures” the divine omnipotence.1 When the priests consecrate the eucharistie sacrifice in which Christ wills to associate us with the bloody offering of the cross, and when they confer the sacraments of grace, then, in virtue of the power of order, they arc as instruments in the hands of Christ in heaven, and they stand to Him somewhat as the brush to the artist, or the pen filled with ink and ready for use in the writer’s fingers, crying out, so to say, for the free action of the writer.2 The power of order is not a power superior to the sacerdotal power of Christ, nor even independent of it, but a power constantly and completely subordinated to it, a power purely instrumental. 2. Philosophers tell us that the effect resembles the principal cause, not the instrumental cause. If, in the celebration of the sacrifice or the adminis­ tration of the sacraments, the priest is no more than an instrument in the hands of Christ, then it is the riches of Christ that pass into the world, not the poverty of the priest. And when the minister is unworthy, when the hierarchy is overrun with evil growths, when Judas dispenses the gift of Christ, it is still the gift of Christ that continues to pass. But heresies, terrible judgments of God on His Church, lie close at hand, and it will always be their favourite tactic to use the abuses that disfigure divine institutions to attack those institutions themselves. Souls are then in great peril, but the personal responsibility of each of them remains, and the course they have to steer, however heroic, is clear enough. “You know well that if a filthy and badly dressed person brought you a great treasure from which you obtained life, you would not hate the bearer however ragged and filthy he might be, through love of the treasure and the lord who sent it you. His state would indeed displease you, and you should be anxious for love of his master that he should be cleansed from his foulness and properly clothed. This then is your duty according to the demands of charity, and thus I wish you to act with regard to such badly ordered priests, who, themselves filthy and clothed with garments ragged with vice through their separation from my love, 1 In an address delivered in 1922, Karl Barth went so far as to declare with deep conviction, that according to the Catholics the priest is creator Creatoris (Parole de Dieu et parole humaine, Paris 1933, pp. 139 and 154. English trans. D. Horton, The Word of God and the Word of Man, London 1928, pp. 113 and 131). 1 “ Character ... est qualitas permanens, ut instrumentum constituat hominem debito modo, id est ut homo ita sit ordinatus ut habeat sibi connaturalem et debitum concursum instrumentalem ad exercendum sacramentales effectus . . . Hoc tamen non ponit in ipso activitatem per modum permanentis, sed tota activitas datur quando datur ei elevativus concursus ad instrumental i ter operandum ... non tamen ponenda est in Christo talis qualitas, quia illa solum constituit potentiam ministerialem respectu Christi; et ideo ipsa non debet esse in Christo, sed aliquid illa altius et excellentius. Igitur, habens characterem, ad producendam gratiam habet se sicut calamus prae­ paratus, qui est instrumentum proportionatum ad connaturale scribendi; aliae autem res quae elevari possunt a Deo ad causandam gratiam, habent se sicut calamus non praeparatus ad scriben­ dum, vel sicut aliquid aliud ad id non proportionatum ” (John of St. Thomas, III, q. 63; disp. 25, a. 2, nos. 122 and 144, vol. IX, pp. 350 and 356). The power that most resembles that of the priest is that of all baptized persons at the moment when they contract a sacramental marriage, since then, but in a more limited way, they become the mutual ministers of grace. 87 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE bring you great treasures—that is to say the sacraments of Holy Church— from which you may obtain the life of grace, receiving them worthily . . . It is not according to my will that they should administer to you the Sun, being themselves in darkness, or that they should be stripped of the garment of virtue, foully living in dishonour; on the contrary I have given them to you, and appointed them to be earthly angels and suns, as I have said. It not being my wall that they should be in this state, you should pray for them, and not judge them, leaving their judgment to me. And I, moved by your prayers, will do them mercy if they will only receive it, but if they do not correct their life, their dignity will be the cause of their ruin. For if they do not accept the breadth of my mercy, I, the supreme Judge, shall terribly condemn them at their last extremity, and they will be sent to the eternal 3. All the baptized and all the confirmed, as we have seen, directly participate in the priesthood ofJesus Christ. They have the active power to exercise, in a way that is not merely material and exterior, but valid and liturgical, certain acts of Christian worship—to imite themselves for example with the offering of the sacrifice of the Mass, to confess the Christian faith; and also an active power to be ministers in the celebration of their own marriages. They have furthermore (whether simply or perfectly, according as they are baptized only or also confirmed) the passive power to receive, not merely materially or outwardly, but validly, liturgically and sacra­ mentally, all the other sacraments. But to what would the sacramental power given in Baptism be reduced if there were no priests to offer the sacrifice of the Mass, if there were neither priests nor bishops to confer the other sacraments? It would deposit in the baptized, in preference to the non-baptized, a certain connaturality to confer non-solemn or private Baptism ; and it would give them a radical power to contract Christian marriage, the spouses themselves being the valid ministers and subjects. With Baptism and Matrimony sacramental grace would make its appearance in the world. But the sacrifice and five of the sacraments of the New Law would be lost. The power of order is not to be defined save in function of the personal sacerdotal work which Christ still carries out by the sacrifice and by the sacraments of the New Law. The sacrifice of the cross, perpetuated in the bloodless rite of the Mass, remains not simply a meritorious cause of the salvation of each generation of men (and at the same time latreutic, propitiatory, impetratory and eucharistie), but also an instrumental efficient cause “conjoined” to the Divinity (as the hand is an instrument “conjoined” to a human person), the suffering Christ having been the organ used by the Divinity in sending down His mercy on the world. And the sacraments of the New Law arc, as regards each individual man an instrumental efficient cause of sacramental grace and even of the sacra* The Dialogue of St. Catherine of Siena, trans. Algar Thorold, London 1925, p. a+6. 88 THE POWER OF ORDER mental power—an instrumental efficient cause “separated” from the Divinity (as the pen is an instrument “separated” from the person of the writer). Thus the sacrifice of the Mass and the sacraments of the New Law are the causes of redemptive grace in our midst—the super-eminent meritorious cause and “conjoined ” efficient cause in the case of the sacrifice of the Mass, which brings us the whole Passion of Our Lord; and an efficient cause “separated” from the Divinity in the case of the sacraments of the New Law, which distribute the particular effects of the Passion. Now, it is the power of order which enables those in whom it resides to act as instruments in the action that perpetuates the sacrifice of the cross. And, save for the sacrament of Matrimony, it is still this same power of order that enables those in whom it resides to act as instruments in the sacramental transmission of grace and of the sacramental power itself. For the sacrament and he who confers it arc together but a single instrument in the hands of God. So that it is from the power of order that the whole Christian cultus is suspended. Neither the sacrifice nor the sacrament of the Eucharist would be per­ petuated in the world if, per impossibile, the power of order were extinguished; if, in other words, the apostolic succession were interrupted. And the Eucharist is the centre of the Christian cultus.1*IVThose other acts of the cultus which could still be exercised would, with the disappearance of the Eucharist, lose their highest purpose. The whole being of the Church in all her parts is permeated by the sacerdotal power of Christ; the shadow of the supreme consecration of the Eternal Pontiff entirely covers her, invests, consecrates and spiritualizes her, and enables her validly to continue the outward cultus, celebrated by Christ on the threshold of the new era, to be continued down the ages “till He come” to judge the world. But, in a part of her being, the Church is still more intimately permeated by the sacerdotal power of Christ.2 In those of her children who receive the power of order she is consecrated, spiritualized, so that as an instrument moved by Christ she may carry out the highest acts of the Christian cultus— those acts which constitute its centre and heart, around which all the rest arc grouped and from which they receive their meaning. 1 The Christian cultus consists above all in the presence among men, thanks to the bloodless rile of the Mass, of the bloody sacrifice of the cross, and in the administration to each man of the greatest of the sacraments, that of the Eucharist. It consists secondarily in the administration of the sacraments preparatory either to the consecration of the Eucharist (sacrament of Order) or to the reception of the Eucharist (and here, as St. Thomas explains (III, q. 65, a. 3), we must put all the other sacraments, not even excluding Matrimony). 1 “ The minister is compared to his master as an instrument to the principal agent . . . But the instrument should be proportionate to the agent. Therefore Christ's ministers should be conformed to him . . . Consequently Christ’s ministers need to be men, and to share in his Godhead by a kind of spiritual power: since the instrument shares in the power of the principal agent ” (St. Thomas, IV Con. Gent,j cap. Ixxiv, De Sacramento Ordinis). 89 ■■■■ ί hΗ I. ίίι THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE The hierarchic sacramental power, or power of order, acts as an efficient cause in the Church and in the world. It enables those who possess it to act as instrumental causes hypostatically ‘‘separated ” from the Divinity— Christ being an Instrumental Cause hypostatically “conjoined” to the Divinity—in the dispensing of the graces which possess the greatest per­ fection—i.e. sacramental graces. And it enables them, always as “separated” instrumental causes, to make Our Lord corporeally present through all time with all the virtue of His Passion, and thus to lift succeeding generations from the slough of sin. IV. THE MATERNAL FUNCTION OF THE HIERARCHY j. CHRISTIANS UNEQUAL BEFORE THE HIERARCHY BUT EQUAL AS TO SALVATION Christ, the Head of the Church, is He, says St. Paul “from whom the whole body, by joints and bands, being supplied with nourishment and com­ pacted, groweth unto the increase of God” (Col. ii. 19). In these joints and bands by which the life of the Head is communicated to the whole body to give it due growth, it is easy, especially in the light of the later life of the Church, to recognize the jurisdictional and sacramental powers of the hierarchy. From St. Paul we learn how some illuminatus, worshipping angels with false humility, and a confidence based on merely human speculation (ibid., 18: Knox version), sought to detach the citizens of Colossae from these powers. In a parallel text of the Epistle to the Ephesians, the Apostle teaches that the inequalities of the ministry, far from forming an obstacle to the unity of the faithful in truth and in love, arc the very means to it ; and that their end is to bring us all “into the unity of faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. iv. 13).1 There is nothing repellent in the idea of hierarchical inequality. If the power of order is a reserved privilege,1 its supreme justification and raison 1 “ Once the nature of character is understood we must surely see that the doctrine of the three sacramental characters is implicitly contained in the two Pauline texts, Ephesians iv. 16, and Ccloss’.ans ii. 19 * (Bernardus Durst, Abbas Ord- St. Bencd., “ De Characteribus S aeramen tali bus ”, Xtnia Thjmistica, 1925, vol. II, pp. 555 and 578). 1 It will always be so as regards women. Here recall the following points: 1. No woman can validly receive the sacrament of Order, cf. St. Thomas, Suppl., q. 39, a. 1. That is a provision of “ divine law ’’ rescaled by way of the tradition and attested by the constant custom of the Church, so that “ all the Fathers have condemned as heretics those who in various sects have admitted women to holy orders and to the priesthood " (Gotti, De Sacramento Ordinis, q. 3, dub. 1: Bologna 1734, vol. XV, p. 73), 2. What are the reasons for this disine ordinance? Theologians have looked for them in Scrip­ ture and produce the well-known passages of St. Paul: “ Let women keep silence in the churches: it is not permitted them to speak, but to be subject, as also the law saith ” (1 Cor. »v. 34). “ But 1 suffer not a woman to leach, nor to use authority over the man: but to be in silence ·’ (1 Tim. ii. 12). These texts and others like them, should contain the answer to our question; but since on the GO JO-·- THE POWER OF ORDER d'etre is to distribute the far more precious, wholly incomparable, riches of salvation universally to all the world. The man in whom resides the power of order is the instrument who, in the celebration of the Eucharist, brings other hand the)' incontestably refer to the historical and contingent situation of women in the ancient world, their interpretation is a delicate matter. St. Thomas does not overlook the fact. He does not use them to conclude to any spiritual inferiority in the woman. He knows that “ in reality, in what concerns the things of the soul, the woman does not differ from the man, and it sometimes happens diat the woman, in matters concerning the soul, is superior to many men ” (Suppl., q. 39, a. I, ad 1). He knows that, after the example of Debora, a woman can occupy the highest rank in die government of temporal or political things. What he takes from St. Paul is that, things of the soul apart, die woman is, as regards exterior things, in a state of general subordinadon (mulier statum subjectionis habet). Gertrude von Le Fort, who has made a profound study of the true great­ ness of women, docs not deny it; she contents herself with the remark that “ the passive and recep­ tive side of the feminine being, which antiquity took purely negatively, appears in the Christian order of grace as the positive diing that decides all she writes of the veil that “ on earth it is the symbol of mystery ”, and also, “ the symbol of femininity ”, that “ all the great manifestations of feminine life make the woman appear as veiled ” (j\roca et Vetera, 1938, p. 58). That does not mean that women are unfitted for external action in the temporal order or even in the religious—to those who cited St. Paul against her St. Teresa could but reply as the Lord directed her: “Tell them they are not to be guided by one part of Scripture alone, but to look at others; ask them if they suppose diey will be able to tic My hands ” (Spiritual Relations, in Complete Works of St. Teresa of Jesus, trans. A. Peers, London 1946, vol. I, p. 344). It does however mean that apart from the always possible case of an exceptional mission such as that of Joan of Arc, women have their own peculiar type of aptitude—which is, in general, veiled. When this observation, valid for all times though its importance may vary with the times, and implying nothing humiliating, is seen in relation to die general principles of sacramental theology, it enables St. Thomas to explain the suit­ ability of the divine ordinance that reserves ordination for men. The sacraments, he says, being essentially signs, arc not validly conferred save when their symbolism is safeguarded (q. 39, a. 1). Just as Extreme Unction therefore, which should be given as a spiritual medicament (q. 30, a. 1) does not retain its symbolism, and is invalid, save when conferred on a sick person (q. 32, a. 1, ad 1): so Order, which confers a hierarchical superiority, retains neither its symbolism nor its validity save when applied to the man and not to the woman, who is, outwardly, in a state of subordination (q- 39> a. 1). Thus, for the things of the soul die woman is pronounced to be man’s equal, but as to certain external activities she is, as such and in general, weaker; and that is enough to prevent the symbolism of the sacrament of Order being verified in her. 3. Was Our Lady a priest? That could be maintained, even while die sacerdotal character is denied to women. We should dicn say that she was priest in an eminent and un transmissible way, by reason of her divine maternity, without having any communicable priesthood, and without formally possessing the character of Order. Thus the plenitude of die sacerdotal power resides in Christ, but not the sacramental character, which is no more than a participation of it (St. Thomas, III, q. 68, a. 5). The two questions therefore have no necessary* connection. But those who say, like St. Epiphanius, that Our Lady herself was not a priest, conclude from that, a fortiori, that no other woman can be so cither, cf. Panarion, haer. 79; P.G. XLII, col. 744. All Our Lady’s privileges arc a consequence of the great Gospel privilege which made her the worthy Mother of a saviour God; so that if we recognize priesthood in Our Lady this will be in virtue of that first privilege. The question is, arc we so to recognize it? The priest is someone who is consecrated in order to give God to men and men to God in union wdth the redemptive sacrifice of the Cross. But according to St. Thomas (III, q. 63, a. 3) there arc two sorts of consecration: first, that of the sacramental characters, which ensures the unbroken continuity of die Christian cultus in the line of validity (particularly that of die hierarchical character of order, w hich ensures the permanence of the redemptive sacrifice under the eucharistie species) ; and second, that of the grace and charity of Christ, more deep-reaching and more precious, to which the preceding con­ secration is ordered, and which ensures the sanctity of the cultus in spirit and in truth. Just as we distinguish in the Church two sorts of greatness, that of the hierarchy and that of charity, so also we may recognize (as does the Roman Catechism, pt. ii. ch. vii. nos. 23-4) two sorts of priest­ hood; the first external, reserved to certain individuals and conferred by the sacrament of Order (which we will call the hierarchic priesthood), and the second internal and common to all the DI Ii THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE down the presence of Christ Himself, drawing into the bloody offering of the cross those who, without daring to lift up their eyes to heaven, were making a futile search in and around themselves for that wholly pure supplication needed to obtain forgiveness for their sins, to lead other souls to the truth, to bring down each morning the heaven of love on the hard egoism of the world ; to bring us Christ, whose own heart beats in the heart of His visible Church which He strengthens against all the assaults of hell. Again, this man is the instrument whom God makes use of from heaven to dispense through the sacraments, to those who approach them as suppliants, the remission of their sins, the gift of a new birth, the living water capable at once of maintaining and quenching the thirst of their exile and of springing up unto eternal life. In the presence of the riches of the sacrifice of the Mass and of the sacraments of the New Law, there remains no other inequality among Christians than the inequality of their desire and love, their hunger and thirst. It is not the hierarchic degree that counts but the degree of poverty, of humility, abnegation, suffering, and magnanimity. It was not the power to strike the rock in the desert of Sinai that quenched the thirst of Moses, but the water itself that sprang up in abundance for himself and for all the people. Thus the men of the hierarchy cannot be sanctified by the power of order taken alone, but rather by grace, the issue of this power, a grace they receive on the same conditions as all other Christians. Inasmuch as they possess the power of order, the Pope, the bishops, priests and ministers belong to the hierarchy, but inasmuch as they have souls to save, they take their place among the faithful; they belong to the “ Church believing”, and, when they think of the heavy account they will have to render, they are likely to consider themselves the last among men—for fear, as the Apostle faithful (Apoc. i. 5-6: 1 Pct. ii. 5) which we will, if the expression be permitted, call a priesthood of love. The question then is, bow are we to accord the first kind of priesthood to Our Lady, and how could we not accord to her the second kind? Now, the doctrine concerning the Church and Our Lady which I have expounded in the second volume of the present work leads us to view Our Lady on Calvary as present as co-red emptrix of the whole world, wholly hidden within the greatness of sanctity. In my view, therefore, it is the mystical and interior priesthood of love alone, which is fittingly accorded to Our Lady. As long as these distinctions have not been made there will continue to be conflict among theologians on this point, some denying Our Lady any kind of priesthood and others recognizing in her a priesthood of the most eminent kind. The history of this dispute has been dealt with almost exhaustively by Réné Lauren tin (Afarse, Γ Eglise et le sacerdoce> Essai sur le développement d'une idée religieuse (Sorbonne doctorate thesis), Paris 1952: vol. Il {Etude ihJologique^ 1953)· who puts the solution to the problem with admirable clarity, especially in voL I, pp. 651 fT. However, instead of following St. Thomas in distinguishing within the Church herself the ministerial greatness of the hierarchy and the terminal greatness of sanctity, the author prefers to distinguish between virility and femininity, activity and passivity, even divine grace and human nature—all of which is less satisfactory. For what can be more active, more enterprising and more daring than co-redemptive love? And what does Our Lady's co-redemptivc mediation mean if not her mystical priesthood at the foot of the cross? The theological problem once solved, there remains only the choice between two expressions—that of “co-redemptive mediation’· and “mystical priesthood”—and if the second expression seems liable to become equivocal in the course of time, the obvious choice is the first. If a magisterial definition is one day given on this subject, it will concern Our Lady's mediation, or mediatory intercession, either as co-rcdemptrix in the acquiring of the graces of salvation or codispenser in the distribution of them, rather than her priesthood. 92 THE POWER OF ORDER warns them, that having converted others they should themselves be cast­ aways (i Cor. ix. 27). s. THE MATERNITY OF THE CHURCH At the moment when the Word became flesh, the divine virtue was carried into the heart of the material universe to restore, transform and sanctify it. Not only the corporeal nature of Christ, but material nature in its entirety, was then invited to share in a dignity hitherto unheard-of. For if in the Incarnation itself it was Christ’s Body that became the instrument of the Spirit of God, in the sacraments it is now other elements, of the mineral, vegetable and human order: bread, water, wine, oil, our own bodily acts and words.1 Henceforth we can say that the earth which, till then, had provided man only with his bodily life and nutriment, appears in the sacraments as provider for his spiritual life and food as well.2 But—and there is no exception save in the case of private Baptism—the minister who applies the sacraments of the New Law has to be consecrated ; 1 “ The Sacraments arc universal and wholly divine in this sense also, that they sanctify man’s physical as well as his moral and spiritual life; and more, they consecrate and bring back to God the elemental principles of the material world. Thus in Baptism the Holy Spirit, which in the begin­ ning of creation ‘ moved upon the face of the waters *, renews its hidden action on water as a primordial and representative dement of the material world. In Confirmation and Anointing a pure product of vegetable life is consecrated to become a vehicle of the action of grace upon the human body . . . etc.” (Vladimir Soloviev, God, Man and the Church, the Spiritual Foundations of Life, trans. D. Attwaler, J. Clarke and Co., London, p. 167). 5 These considerations are borrowed from Scheeben, Die Mjsterien des Christentums, ch. viiiî “ The Mystery of the Church and the Sacraments According to this theologian, character is, in us, distinguished from grace, as, in Christ, the substantial grace of union with the Word is dis­ tinguished from habitual grace. The character elevates our hypostasis by uniting us to the hypos­ tasis of Christ, in us it is a similitude and a participation of what the hypostatic union is in Christ; but grace elevates our nature by bringing us into community of life with God. From this principle Scheeben deduces that if the hypostatic union is, in Christ, the root of habitual grace, the character is, in us, the root of sanctifying grace, not as containing it in a latent state but as morally demanding its presence in the soul. And when it supervenes in dependence on the character, grace is invested with a higher dignity, not only because it then adorns a member of Christ, but also because its gold enshrines the precious stone of the character, and because the robe of the child of God, when united to the seal of incorporation in the natural Son of God, shines out in greater splendour. So noble a thing is the character that it cannot be confined to any one of the powers of the soul as subject; it overflows them all, reaches the soul’s very substance and calls for the presence of grace throughout it. Scheeben profoundly concludes that in the Mystical Body the configuration to Christ resulting from the impression of the character has the same significance as the configuration of the members to the head in biology; in both cases the identity of configuration is the necessary' condition of the unity of inner life and of outward action. But however seductive these views of Schechen’s may be, they clearly cannot all be reconciled with the positions taken up by John of St. Thomas and by St. Thomas himself. How docs the matter look from their standpoint? No dignity of the hypostatic order can be communicated to any mere creature. Besides this grace of union, Christ possessed another incommunicable privilege; for, from the fact that it is really united to the Word and is an organ of the Divinity, habitual grace in Him has unique perfection: it is in the nature of capital grace, it becomes the source whence grace flows to all the members of Christ. But Christ is Head of the Church not only because He communicates sanctifying grace, but as High Priest and Founder of the Christian cultus. The sacerdotal power of Christ is a created quality residing not in the essence of His soul, nor in His will, but in His intelligence. Now it is in this sacerdotal power that the character makes us participate, and that is why its immediate subject is the intelli­ gence. “ Si ergo sacerdotium Christi debet esse aliquid ad intellectum pertinens, character qui est participatio talis sacerdotii, exequens ministerialiter id quod sacerdotium Christi principaliter, 93 - THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE he has to possess the sacramental power. The instrumental cause adopted by the Spirit to confer grace comprehends the sacrament, the minister, and the sacramental power of the minister. As compared with the other elements of this instrumental cause, the sacramental power, which is a participation of the priesthood of Christ, is the element that elevates, spiritualizes, super­ naturalizes. It is therefore, as it were, the soul of the instrumental cause. It makes that cause fully fit to be used by the Spirit in the giving of His benefits. Now, Matrimony excepted, the sacramental power needed to administer the sacraments is the power of order.1 Moreover, that power alone enables the central sacrifice of the Christian religion to be perpetuated from genera­ tion to generation. Hence also it is the power of order, the first and chief of the hierarchic powers—thesecond being the jurisdictional or pastoral power— to which the maternal function of the Church is primarily and principally due. This maternity’ is much more than a mere touching evocation of the cares and tendernesses of a mother in the work of the hierarchy as the “teaching Church”. It means that the hierarchy has all that real importance for our supernatural life that a mother has for her children’s natural life. Scheeben, who makes much of it, indicates the two chief aspects of this maternity': fecundity (Fruchtbarkeif}, which he refers wholly to the power of order, to the sacerdotium', and the educative and pastoral function (Hirtengewalt), which he refers to the power of jurisdiction. When he speaks of fecundity he recalls that the Holy Spirit, who by the mediation and free acquiescence of Our Lady, formed Christ to give Him to the world, avails Himself to-day of the mediation of the power of order to make this same Christ substantially debet etiam ad intellectum pertinere ”, writes John of St. Thomas (III, q. 63, disp. 25, a. 4, no. 12; vol. IX, p. 36g). St Thomas sap expressly that the character, from the fact that it is an instru­ mental virtue, cannot reside in the soul in the manner of grace (III, q. 63, a. 5, ad 1). The capital grace of Christ might, in a broad sense, be taken to cover both sanctifying grace and His sacerdotal power. “ Character ... derivatur a sacerdotio Christi et potestate excellentiae quam, ex vi gratiae capitis, habet supra totam Ecclesiam; quae aliquid physicum est ”, writes John of St. Thomas once more (ibid., a. 2, no. 121, p. 350). Although it is the common effect of the three divine Persons, the character, being a participation in the priesthood of Christ, can be called ” character of Christ ” ; and since Christ is hypostaticaDy united to the Word, it could be said that the character conforms us to the Word rather than to the Father and the Holy Spirit But it is not superior to grace: it is referred to the priesthood of Christ and therefore to Christ as Man; whereas grace is an immediate participation of the divine nature: “ In exemplari ta te et participatione character respicit sacer­ dotium Christi, et consequenter Christum secundum quod homo; in quo differt a gratia, quae est immediata participatio naturae divinae ” (ibid., a. 3, no. 4, p. 366). Can one say, after that, that grace is ennobled by the character as gold by a diamond? Following John of St. Thomas I prefer to say that what enriches grace is the sacramental modality it gains when conferred through the sacraments, are conformed to Christ more by grace than by the sacramental character. The latter remains intact in hell. It will no longer be needed in heaven, where our exterior worship will have ceased, as St. Thomas says (III, q. 63, a. 5, ad 3); it will therefore not be partaken by all the elect. But in all the elect grace will have attained its sacramental flowering. Here, un­ doubtedly, we are in the presence of two great divergent conceptions of the character. We must choose. The one seems to admit a sort of participation in the hypostatic union and, in a way, to raise the order of the hierarchy above the order of sanctity. The other, that of St. Thomas, fully safeguards the primacy of the order of love in time and eternity. 1 Matrimony is a sacrament only if contracted by the baptized. Baptism can, of course be administered even by the unbaptized. 94 THE POWER OF ORDER present in our midst under the eucharistie species: so that the maternity of Our Lady to which we owe the birth of Christ, finds a kind of replica in the maternity of the power of order, to which we owe the eucharistie Christ. Nor does the maternal function of the priesthood stop there. It touches all Christians who, by way of the sacraments, arc incorporated into Christ as His members and compose His Church. It is the power of order, the priesthood, which, as a mere instrument indeed of the divine omnipotence, brings forth children at Baptism, prepares them for the struggle of life at Confirmation, nourishes them with the eucharistie Bread, cleanses them of their stains and heals their infirmities by Penance and Extreme Unction; and finally renews and perpetuates itself by the conferring of Orders.1 On the day of the Annunciation the Holy Spirit gave a mysterious fecundity to Our Lady, making her the Mother of Christ and consequently the Mother of all men. This fecundity He now communicates, in a different and analogical manner no doubt, to the power of order, to the priesthood, so that it may bring the eucharistie Christ into the world and generate the Church which is His Body; the Body to which all who are to be saved must either consciously or unconsciously belong. Here, at its purest and highest, we have the maternal function of the hierarchy. If we include the hierarchic function within the very heart of the Church, and make “ the Church” a fusion of the “ Church teaching” and the “ Church believing”, then, to those who ask why Christ should have recourse to a hierarchy to baptize, consecrate the Eucharist, remit sins and so forth, we shall answer with the mystical theologians of the Middle Ages2 that un­ doubtedly Christ alone could have done all these things, but that, having entered into union with the Church as with His Spouse and as His own flesh, He willed to receive His immediate children from none but her.3 3. THE DEFICIENCIES OF CERTAIN MEMBERS OF THE HIERARCHY; TEXTS OF ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM AND ST. AUGUSTINE The depositaries of the hierarchical powers who, in Christ’s name, pro­ claim the truth and communicate life, may, by their personal conduct, 1 “ The maternity of the Church in the strict sense is the prerogative, not of all her members, but only of the depositaries of her fecundity and of her pastoral power by which the children of the Church arc begotten, cared for, educated. It belongs, in a word, to the fathers of the Church. We naturally call them fathers on account of their sex, since Christ ordained that the high functions of the Church should be carried out by men. But if we consider their place in the Church formally and on its supernatural side, if we look rather at their dignity than at their persons, then it is the character of maternity that specially appears in them. United to the God-man in a particular way in the Holy Spirit, they appear in fact as the intermediary by Avhich the God-man, like a father, begets, cares for and educates his children. What precisely has to be taken into account from this standpoint, is not the multiplicity of their persons but the unity of their relation to Christ and to the Holy Spirit, a unity which finds its genuine expression in the jurisdictional dependence of all Christians with regard to the depository of the full pastoral powers ” (M. J. Scheeben, op. dt., §80, P- 533)· 1 For example, Isaac of I'Etoile. ’The above views the Church’s motherhood from the standpoint of the greatness of the hierarchy; the motherhood arising from her sanctity is more mysterious yet. 95 J ! THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE offend and even betray Christ. The important thing is that Christ’s message and Christ’s holiness should, in spite of all, be passed on to other men There will always be hearts ready to receive them, a deep and fertile earth in which they can strike their roots. Nobody would be excused for pleading the thorns as a pretext for neglecting the roses. St. John Chrysostom puts it plainly enough: “You are asked to get rid of your sins, not to show that others have committed the like.” “We are ready,” he says, “to give an account of ourselves. Even if that were not so, even if your teachers were corrupt, rapacious, avaricious, their perversion would not be your justi­ fication. For the Lover of man, the All-wise, the Only-Begotten Son of God, seeing all things, knowing that in so great length of time in so vast a w'orld there would be many bad priests; lest their neglect should increase the care­ lessness of the flock, removing all excuse: In Moses’ seat, saith He, sit the Scribes and Pharisees; all things therefore they shall bid you do, that observe and do, but after their works do ye not: for they say, and do not [Matt, xxiii. 2] ; showing that even if your teacher be wayward you will not therefore be excused for failing to do the good that he teaches. God will judge you not for what your teacher did, but for what you learnt from him and did not do. So that if you do the things commanded you will be safe enough; but if you have trans­ gressed them it will avail you nothing to point to ten thousand bad priests. Judas indeed was an Apostle, but this will never excuse the sacrilegious and the covetous; and no one accused wall be able to say: Why, even an Apostle was a thief, and sacrilegious, and a traitor! Yea, this very thing shall most of all be our punishment and condemnation, that not even by the evil of others were we corrected. For this cause also these things were written in Scripture, that we might be warned not to imitate them. Wherefore, without worrying any more about so-and-so let us be attentive to ourselves; for each of us will have to give an account of himself to God.”1 The same saint says again when showing that the priesthood is superior to royalty: “To the king earthly things are entrusted: to me, heavenly. To me; that is, to the priest. So when you notice an unworthy priest do not attack the priesthood; the thing itself is not to be blamed, but he w’ho puts the good thing to bad use. IfJudas was a traitor, that is no condemnation of the apostolate, but simply of his own life ; it is not an objection against the priesthood but a sin against his conscience. Never therefore accuse the priesthood, but the priest who uses good things ill. If anyone, disputing with you, says: Look now, there goes your Christian! answer, I am not concerned with persons, but with things. For indeed, how many physicians turn out to be executioners, and instead of remedies administer poisons! But I do not blame their art, but those who use it badly. How many sailors have wrecked their ships’, and yet it is not the art of navigation that is wrong, but the use they make of it. If you meet a bad Christian, accuse neither his faith nor his priesthood, but him who turns so great a thing to such ill account.”2 1 In i Cor.t Homil., xxi; P.G. LXI, col. 180. 1 In illud: Vidi Dominum . . . Homil., iv; P.G. LVI, col. 126 THE POWER OF ORDER About the same time St. Augustine wrote to the virgin Felicia who was disturbed by the conduct of certain of the clergy: “I exhort you not to let yourself be too much troubled by scandals, which indeed were foretold precisely so that when they happen we may remember that they were foretold and not be disconcerted. For the Lord Himself foretold them in the Gospel. Woe to the world because of scandals. For it must needs be that scandals come: but nevertheless, woe to that man by whom the scandal cometh [Matt, xviii. 7]. Who arc these men, if not those of whom the Apostle says: They seek the things that are their own; not the things that are Jesus Christ's [Phil. ii. 21]? Thus there are those who hold the office of shepherds that they may watch over Christ’s sheep; and there are those who hold it for the sake of temporal honours and worldly advantages. These two kinds of pastors, always dying and giving place to others, will both be perpetuated in the bosom of the Catholic Church till time end and the Lord come to judgment. For if in the days of the Apostles there were false brethren who made the Apostle groan and complain of perils from false brethren [2 Cor. xi. 26], and yet He did not cast them out but bore with them patiently, how much more now would He not meet with them; since of this age which draws to a close the Saviour said openly: Because iniquity hath abounded, the charity of many shall grow cold. But yet let us be consoled and encouraged by what follows : He that shall persevere to the end, he shall be saved [Matt. xxiv. 12-13]. “Just as there are good and bad amongst the shepherds, so there are good and bad in the flocks. The good are the sheep; the bad are the goats. But they feed together in the same pastures till the Prince of Shepherds shall come, even the One Shepherd [John x. 16]. Then as He promised, He will divide as a shepherd the sheep from the goats [Matt, xxv. 32]. As for us, He commands us to gather the flock and reserves the work of separation for Himself; He only may separate who cannot err. Presumptuous servants have lightly dared to separate before the time reserved by the Saviour for Himself; and these are they who are separated from Catholic unity. All soiled by schism as they are, how can they call themselves a clean flock? “So therefore that we may remain in unity, not leaving the Lord’s threshing-floor even when we arc scandalized by the chaff, that we may remain like grains of wheat till the time of the winnowing, and thanks to the charity that brings stability may bear with the beaten straw, our Shepherd Himself speaks in the Gospel both of the good shepherds, asking us not to put our hope in them on account of their good works but to glorify Him who made them such, their Father in heaven; and of the bad shepherds, represented by the Scribes and Pharisees, who teach us good things, and themselves do evil. “For of the good shepherds He says: You are the light of the world ... so let your light shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your e 97 ί P;1 ' I Π J : 9 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE Father who is in heaven [Matt. v. 14-16]. r\nd of the bad shepherds He says : The Scribes and Pharisees have sitten on the chair of λ foses. All things therefore whatsoever they shall say to you, observe and do; but according to their works do ye not: for they say and do not [Matt, xxiii. 2-3]. If they understand these words, the sheep of Christ will know how to hear Christ’s voice, even in the evil teachers, and will not forsake the unity of the flock. For the good things they hear them say come from Him, not them; they feed then in safety, and even under bad shepherds they arc nourished in the Lord’s pastures. But they do not the works of die bad shepherds, for these works come from them, not Him. AVhcn they see die good shepherds, not only do they listen to the good things they say, but they follow the good things they do. So it was with the Apostle who said : Beye followers of me, as I also am of Christ [1 Cor. xi. 1]. He was a light kindled by the Eternal Light, the Lord Jesus Christ . . ,”1 Here we have, applied to the Church teaching, the very distinction wc made with respect to the Church as a whole, when wc said that she was not without sinners, but without sin. EXCURSUS II SOME RECENT VIEWS ON THE SACRAMENT OF ORDER Recent historical researches have resulted in the reappraisal of pontifical docu­ ments concerning the extraordinary minister of the sacrament of Order, and even in some cases to their discovery for the first time. This invites theologians to get to closer grips with the teaching of the Church’s magisterium—particularly at the Council of Trent—on the sacrament of Order, so as to determine its bearings with reference to the numerous opinions held hitherto. In addition, the pro­ mulgation of the Apostolic Constitution on the Holy Orders of the Diaconate, Prcsbyterate and Episcopate (30 Nov. 1947 by His Holiness Pope Pius XII, which declares what arc the form and matter henceforth valid for each, is a major event as far as the history of the sacrament of Order is concerned. From all this it follows that we may with profit re-examine the teaching of earlier theologians concerning the degrees of Order and their origin. My intention here is to give a short exposé of the present state of the problem and to indicate which would seem to be the solutions to be preferred. i. Tile Code of Canon Law According to the Code, “by virtue of a divine institution [ex divina institutione] there arc in the Church clerics who arc distinguished from the laity, although all clerics are not of divine institution " (can. 107). Thus certain clerics are distinct from the laity under divine law. Clerics “are not all of the same rank, but a sacred hierarchy exists among them in which they’ are subordinated one to another " (can. 108, §2). 1 Epixt., 208, 2 and 5. 98 THE POWER OF ORDER There then follows the fundamental text on the subject of the hierarchy: “By virtue of divine institution [ex divina institutione] the sacred hierarchy comprises [constat] bishops, priests, and ministers in the line of order [ratione ordinis]; and in the line of jurisdiction [ratione jurisdictionis] a supreme pontificate and a subordinated episcopate. But by virtue of an institution of the Church [ex Ecclesiae autem institutione] other degrees besides have been added” (can. 108, §3)· Canon 109 recalls that admission to the hierarchy “depends on neither the consent or demand of the people nor the secular power. Where the degrees of the power of order arc concerned it takes place by holy ordination [sacra ordina­ tione] ; where the supreme pontificate is involved it takes place by the divine law itself [ipsomet jure divino] as soon as there has been legitimate election and its acceptance; where the other degrees of jurisdiction, by the canonic mission [canonica missione]”. Canon 329 states further that “the bishops are the Apostles’ successors” and that “by virtue of a divine institution [ex divina institutione] they are put in charge of the various particular Churches, which they rule with an ordinary power under the authority of the Roman Pontiff”. It should be noted that there is no question of two hierarchies, one of order and the other of jurisdiction. The Code recognizes one hierarchy alone, com­ prising degrees of order and of jurisdiction. This hierarchy is of divine institution. In the line of jurisdiction it has two degrees, instituted directly by Christ and hence of divine law: the supreme pontificate over the universal Church, which is handed on to the successors of Peter only; and the subordinate episcopate, which is handed on to the successors of the other Apostles and by which the various Churches are ruled. In the line of order, which we are at present considering, the hierarchy has three degrees: bishops, priests and deacons. In view of this, how arc we to inter­ pret canon 108, §3? Should we translate it: “By virtue of a divine institution the hierarchy comprises, in the line of order, three degrees: bishops, priests and deacons”? That is the version which seems most natural. If it be followed, we shall recognize distinctions of divine law between episcopate, presbyterate and diaconatc in the line of order. On the other hand we can limit the sense and read (though this is decidedly strange): “The hierarchy, which is of divine in­ stitution, comprises, in the line of order, three degrees: bishops, priests and deacons” or again “The hierarchy, by virtue of a divine institution, comprises powers of order and of jurisdiction; the powers of order are distributed in three degrees—bishops, priests and deacons.” If we do this we leave open the question whether the distinctions between episcopate, presbyterate and diaconate are of divine or canon law. In this matter the Code would surely have wanted to follow the teaching of the Council of Trent on the sacrament of Order. The Council said: “If anyone shall say that in the Catholic Church there is not a hierarchy instituted by divine ordinance [divina ordinatione institutam] and comprising bishops, priests and ministers, let him be anathema” (Session XXIII, can. 6, Denz. 966). But what docs this declaration itself signify? What is the definition concerned with? According to some, this is quite clear; the Council maintains that the distinction between episcopate, presbyterate and diaconatc is of divine law. Among others, Cardinal Gasparri, who was later to take a large part in the drawing up of the 99 : i!i THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE Code, held this view.1 According to others, Trent defined that the hierarchy is of divine institution, and did not define that die three degrees of order are so instituted. The question is who is right? And what was the Council's intention? For my own part I think that: a. the three degrees of Order are indeed of divine institution; b. this point was of set purpose left outside die scope of the conciliar definition. 2. The Council of and Trent and the Distinction Between Priests Bishops in the Line of Order I. Here are the various statements of the Council of Trent on the point under discussion (Session XXIII): Chapter 4: “For this reason the holy Council declares that the bishops, suc­ cessors of the Aposdes, belong principally to this hierarchic order, more than the other ecclesiastical ranks; and that they are, as the same Aposde says, placed by the Holy Spirit to rule the Church of God [Acts xx. 28] ; that they are superior to priests, confer the sacrament of Confirmation, ordain the Church's ministers, and carry out numerous duties, functions over which those of an inferior order have no power.11 Can. 6: “If anyone shall say that in the Catholic Church there is not a hier­ archy instituted by divine ordinance and comprising bishops, priests and ministers, let him be anathema.” Can. 7: “If anyone shall say that bishops are not superior to priests, or have not the power to confirm and ordain, or that the power which they have is held by them in common with priests ... let him be anathema” fDenz., 960, 966, 967). Thus bishops are superior to priests by virtue of the fact that they have a power of confirming and ordaining which is not transmitted to priests. 2. The Fathers of the Council had to examine, among others, the two following errors: “There is no ecclesiastical hierarchy, and all Christians are priests equally; the request of the civil authority and the consent of the people are required for the use or exercise of the priesthood: he who has become a priest may be­ come a layman again.” “Bishops are not superior to priests and have not the right to ordain; or if they have, they have it in common with priests . . .”2 1I Η< r· In order to give an answer to the first error, the opening formulae of Canon 6 are content to affirm the existence of the hierarchy—“If anyone shall say that there is not a hierarchy in the Catholic Church, or that all Christians are equally priests and have the same spiritual power, let them be anathema.”3 “If anyone shall say that in the Catholic Church there is not a hierarchy com­ prising bishops, priests and other ministers, let him be anathema.”4 A few days 1 “ Dicimus in primis certum esse primos tres gradus esse divinae institutionis, nempe episco­ patum, presbyteratum et diaconatum. Id definivit Concilium Tridentinum . . . Hirrarchia dicina ordinatione instituta constans episcopis, presbyteris et ministris indicat clare episcopatum, presbyteratum et ministerium (quod saltem erit diaconatus), esse divinae institutionis” [Tractatus Canonicus de Sacra Ordinatione, Paris 1893, vol. I, no. 31, p. i3. Cf. vol. II, nos. 11 48-50. ΡΡ· 301-2). 1 Stephanos Ehses, Acta Concilii Tridentini, Freiburg-i-B 1924, vol. IX, ’ibid., pp. 228, 231. cf. p. 40. 4 ibid., p. 602, n. 1. ΙΟΟ THE POWER OF ORDER before the twenty-third session, the Archbishop of Otranto proposed the formula which, with one word deleted, was finally adopted: “If anyone shall say that in the Catholic Church there is not a hierarchy instituted by divine ordinance [divina ordinatione institutam] comprising bishops, priests and [other] ministers, let him be anathema.”1 To begin with this was accepted by all. Then some, on second thoughts, wanted to substitute for the phrase ‘‘divina ordinatione institutam”, which was too general for their liking, others such as “Episcopos institutos a Christo” or “hierarchiam institutam a Christo” or “peculiari et particulari divina ordina­ tione”2 or “ordinatione divina Christi”.3 To this the legates replied that “they did not deny that bishops are instituted by Christ, but this demanded precision; they stem from Christ not immediately but mediately through the Sovereign Pontiff; or, they stem from Christ [immediately] in that which concerns order but not in that which concerns jurisdiction”.4 As an answer to the second error, the council is constant in affirming that bishops are superior to priests by virtue of their power to confirm and ordain. But to the very last there were two tendencies among the Fathers of the Council. Some wished to insert in Canon 7 that the institution of bishops is of divine law: “If anyone shall say that bishops arc neither instituted by divine law nor superior to priests . . . ”5 or even that it is due to Christ: “If anyone says that bishops are not instituted by Christ in the Church, or that they are not above priests by holy ordination . . . ”6 The others refused, and it was they who prevailed. (3) We now have to consider the three chief reasons for this refusal. First, on grounds of economy: it was not necessary to define further than would exacdy suffice to condemn the Protestant error in question.7 Second, a more immediate reason: a number of Catholic writers, Jerome among them, have held that the distinction between bishops and priests is of canon law only. The Council had no intention of cutting short this debate.8 Third (and apparently this reason weighed most) : given the circumstances and intellectual climate of the time, a clause defining that bishops are instituted under divine law might have encouraged a brief that they hold their powers direcdy from God, without their jurisdiction's deriving from the Pope.9 The intention of the Council is thus clear. It did not wish to define that the superiority of bishops over priests is of divine law. And thus it would be useless to look for a definition of this kind in the final draft of Canon 6. Moreover, certain of the Fathers of the Council subscribed to the Canon only after declaring their regret that it was not explicit on the subject of the divine right of bishops.10 1 ibid. The final wording omitted the word “other” (p. 622). 5 ibid., p. 602, n. 1. ’ibid., p. 616, n. 6. 4 Paleotti, Acta Concilii Tridentini, ed. Gorres, vol. Ill, 1931, p. 691. Cited by H. Lenncrz, S.J. De Sacramento Ordinis, Rome 1947, p. 86, no. 150. * Ehses, op. at., p. 3; p. 4, n. 1 ; p. 32, n. 6; p. 40, n. 3 and 4; p. 49 etc. 4 ibid., p. 228; p. 49. 7 ibid., p. 4. s ibid., pp. 55 ct seq. * ibid., p. 54, lines 9-19. On p. 4, line 12 and p. 181 lines 33-5, the question arises of clerics exempted by the Pope from the jurisdiction of their bishops. A formula affirming the divine institution of bishops and at the same time their dependence on the Sovereign Pontiff was to be proposed finally, only to be rejected (ibid., p. 107, note 2). 10 ibid., p. 622, n. 4, p. 623, lines 16—19. ΙΟΙ Ία 1ι Ü! ; Mb JJi. 1 18 IJ 1 · ; ί »:ijni I: . 1 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE (4) All those who study the acta of the Council of Trent come to the same opinion. Michel writes that Canon 6 ‘‘proclaims as a dogma of faith the existence of this [catholic] hierarchy and in so doing defines as an article of faith the distinction between clerics and laity. This distinction is of divine law: such is the explicit meaning of the incisive divina ordinatione which . . . extends this divine right to the [entire] hierarchy.’"1 Concerning Canon 7 he adds: 44It would have been interesting to settle precisely whether the superiority of the episcopate over the priesthood pure and simple is of divine law, and if so, in what sense; but on this subject the Council maintained a prudent reserve.”2 Baisi holds the same view: “The thing actually defined by the Council is that in the present state of the Church bishops are superior to priests by the power of jurisdiction and have a special power of order. But it was not defined that either this jurisdictional superiority nor the special power of order are exclusively reserved to them under divine law. It is of course possible to invoke Canon 6 against this conclusion. But the Acts of the Council of Trent show that the expression ‘divina ordinatione institutam’ does not necessarily imply direct and explicit institution by Christ but may well refer to mediate institution by way of the Church.”3 Lcnnerz also agrees: “Is the difference between the bishop and the priest and the superiority of the bishop to the priest in the line of order of divine law or not? Is it of direct divine institution or institution directly ecclesiastical and indirectly divine, in the sense that the Church has introduced it herself in virtue of a power received from Christ? The Council of Trent deliberately left this question open and un­ decided. ... By choosing the expression ‘divine ordinance" it intended to exclude the question whether the hierarchy of order—the superiority of bishops over priests—was of direct divine institution ... of divine law or no.”4 (5) To return to Canon 108, §3 of the Code of Canon Law, which says that “in virtue of a divine institution the sacred hierarchy comprises in the line of order bishops, priests and ministers . . . two courses are open to us. On the one hand wc can try to reconcile it more or less (and it will be less rather than more) with Canon 6 of the Council of Trent. On the other we can maintain straightforwardly that it undertakes on its own responsibility a precision and determination of a doctrine which Trent left imprecise and indeterminate. I shall here follow the second course. 3· The Episcopate an Order in the Strict Sense of the Word I. If a layman were consecrated priest directly, the ordination would be valid and would confer on him all the powers of the diaconate at the full. All theologians agree on this point. But what would happen if a layman were directly consecrated bishop? Some theologians think that such an ordination would be invalid. According 1 A. Michel, art. Ordre , Did. de Thfol. Caih.t cols. 1361-2. See the same texts from the 1 ibid. 1 Corrado Baisi, Il ministro straordinario dtgli ordins wramentali, Rome 1935, p. 69. 4 H. Lennen, op. dt., p. 86, no. 150. We cannot follow theologians who hold the contrary view— for example St. Robert Bdlannine (Dt Clericis, cap. xiv): “The Catholic Church recognizes the distinction and teaches that under divine law the episcopate is greater than the presbytcrate as regards either the power of order or jurisdiction. This is, in practice, the teaching of the Council 102 THE POWER OF ORDER to them, episcopal ordination presupposes the fundamental power of consecrating and offering the true Body of Christ; and the episcopal powers of confirming and ordaining arc no more than a complement to this fundamental power, which is concerned with die Mystical Body of Christ. Hence we should say that the episcopate taken by itself, and inadequately, is concerned with the Mystical and not the Sacramental Christ, so that it is an Order only in the loose sense and not in the strict sense; that it is only by reason of the presupposed power to consecrate that it becomes an Order in the strict sense.1 According to others, such an ordination would be valid. It would confer, by itself alone, both the power to consecrate the Eucharist and the powers of con­ firming and ordaining. In this view, the episcopate is not complementary to the priesthood, but a whole of which the priesthood is a part.1 *3 Which opinion is to be preferred?3 This is a question which history must decide. And history' establishes with a sufficient degree of certitude that episcopal ordina­ tion given to subjects who were not priests has been regarded as valid. “At the historical level, there can be no doubt about the independence of the episcopate with regard to the priesthood. The fullness of the sacerdotal power has frequently been conferred by episcopal ordination on subjects who were not priests.’’45 I shall therefore maintain the view that the episcopate is an Order in the strict sense, and that it is the whole of which the priesthood is a part.6 2. What was the thought of Sl Thomas concerning the power conferred by episcopal ordination? A. If we go by what he wrote in the commentary on the Sentences, we shall hold that the bishop possesses a power or order which is conferred on him by con­ secration, over and above the power of jurisdiction which is conferred on him by 1 According to St. Thomas (In IVSent., d. 24, q. 3, a. 2, quacst. 2, and d. 25, q. 1, a. 2, ad 2), the episcopate supposes, apart from the power of jurisdiction, a power of order conferred by means of consecration and impossible to lose. But since this power is not related to the Eucharist it repre­ sents neither a sacrament nor a sacramental character: “ An Order does not depend on the pre­ ceding Order as to its validity; but the episcopal power depends on the sacerdotal power since nobody can receive the first if he does not possess the second.” 3 St. Robert Bellarmine, De Sacramento Ordinis, cap. 5: “ Episcopal ordination is a sacrament . . . The episcopate includes the priesthood in the scope of its concept and in its essence . . . The full and perfect episcopal character is not a simple quality but comprises a twofold character . . . It is impossible to ordain a bishop who either is not a priest already or docs not receive at the same time the twofold ordination which is the essence of the episcopate.” ’The question was left open by Leo XIII in Ids Apostolic Letter on Anglican Ordinations, 15 Sept. 1896: “ This is not the place to go into the question whether the episcopate is comple­ mentary to the priesthood or an Order distinct from it, or the question whether the episcopate produces its effect when conferred pa saltum, that is to say on a subject who is not a priest.” 4 H. Lcnnerz, op. dt., p. 84, no. 147. See the texts which support this condusion, though not all with equal force: pp. 23, 25, 26, 42, 43, 47, 55, 57, 62, 84, 85: nos. 43, 48, 50, 76, 79, 86, 97, 99, too, 113, 148, 149. Lcnnerz's conclusion is much clearer than that of Tixcront, (L'ordre et les ordinations, étude de théologie historique, Paris 1925, p. 233) : “ Morin thinks that there is no example of a bishop consecrated without being ordained priest beforehand. Martenc, Mabillon and D. Chardon are of a different opinion however. . . These facts and texts seem to prove that on several occasions ordinantis who had not previously received the priesthood have been consecrated bishops. But it should also be noted that many of these consecrations, at least, have been strongly censured or even considered null.” 5 It does not follow that there arc eight Orders. The seventh Order in the priesthood, which comprises two degrees: it is full in the superior degree and partial in the inferior degree. Moreover, the Council of Trent did not define the number of Orders. THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE delegation. But this power of order should be divided into two distinct powers, both of which cannot be lost: (a) The principal power of consecrating the true Body of Christ. This power alone is sacramental; it represents the character of Order and is common to both bishops and priests. (i) The secondary power of directing the worship and the hierarchic action of the Mystical Body of Christ; here the bishop, who can confer Confirmation and all the Orders, is superior to the priest. But in virtue of the fact that it is con­ cerned with the Mystical Body of Christ this power is non-sacramcntal and exterior to the character of order. The first power represents Christ by exercising a ministry itself; the second represents Him by instituting ministers who will exercise the ministry, and by organizing the Church.1 B. Is this St. Thomas’ definitive position? Docs he maintain this division of the power of order : that is, into two powers, both conferred by a sacrament which can­ not be repeated, both impossible to lose, one sacramental because directed towards the true Body of Christ and the other non-sacramcntal because directed towards the Mystical Body of Christ? This is not certain. Here is my own view of the matter: In the fourth book of the Contra Gentiles, in the seventy-fourth chapter, he writes that: (i) The spiritual power of order is sacramental by virtue of being passed on under visible signs: (2) That this power is ordered to the dispensing of the sacraments: (3) “That it belongs to the same power to confer a perfection and to prepare the matter for the reception of the perfection ... If then the power of order is ordered to the consecration of the Eucharist and the giving of it to the faithful then this power must also be ordered to making the faithful apt to its reception ... the power of order must therefore extend to the remission of sins by the dispensation of the sacraments instituted to this end, that is, Baptism and Penance.” Thus the one sacramental power is ordered directly to the true Body of Christ and indirectly to the Mystical Body of Christ. On this principle we can no longer distinguish two powers of order of bishops—that is, one sacramental because ordered to the true Body of Christ and one non-sacramental because ordered to the Mystical Body of Christ. St. Thomas said (Jn IV Sent., d. 25, q. 1, a. 2, ad 2) that the power received by bishops on their elevation is not a character although it comes from a con­ secration and cannot be lost, “because it orders man not directly to God but to the Mystical Body of Christ”. In the Summa (III, q. 63) he teaches that the faithful arc prepared “for the acts necessary to the Church as she is at present by a certain spiritual sign imprinted on them which is called the ‘character’ ” (a. I, ad 1): that it is properly speaking ‘ the sacramental character” which prepares the faithful “to receive or to dispense to others the things of the cultus”, and that this character is nothing other than “a participation in the priesthood of Christ derived from Christ Himself” (a. 3); that the sacrament of Order is a preparation for “dispensing the sacraments to others” (a. 6); that “in order to do or to receive something which is related to the cultus of the priesthood of Christ” it is necessary to receive “a sacrament which imprints a character” (a. 6, ad 1). The sacramental character of order is in all cases defined as the power to dispense the sacraments; it is nowhere confined to the power to conse­ crate the Eucharist. 1 In IV Sent., d. 24, q. 3. a- 2» quaat. t and 2: d. 25, q. 1, a. 2, ad 2. THE POWER OF ORDER C. In conformity with these views the position held will be that the power of bishops is an extension of the sacramental power of order, the sacramental character of order. Its supreme act concerns the true Body of Christ; its secondary act concerns the Mystical Body of Christ. The power of bishops is thus superior to that of priests not intensively, relative to the Sacramental Christ, but exten­ sively, relative to the Mystical Christ. The power to consecrate priests destined to perpetuate the Eucharist itself stems from the sacramental power of order even more directly than the powers to baptize and absolve, which dispose the faithful to receive it.1 Here we link up with the text of the Apostolic Constitution on the Holy Orders of the Diaconate, Prcsbyteratc and Episcopate of 30 Nov. 1947: “The sacrament of Order instituted by Christ Our Lord, which confers a spiritual power and the grace for the holy discharge of ecclesiastical functions, is one and the same for the universal Church ” (no. 1). There can be no doubt that the spiritual power and grace in question from the opening of the Constitution onwards are of the sacra­ mental order. Further on we read: “All admit that the sacraments of the New Law, being sensible signs and producers of invisible grace, should signify the grace which they produce, and produce the grace which they signify. Now the effects which the sacred ordination of the diaconate, presbyterate and episcopate ought to produce and thus to signify—that is, power and grace—are, in all the rites in use in the universal Church, in divers periods and countries, adequately indicated by the imposition of hands and the words which determine it" (no. 3). From the evidence of this text it results that ordination is a sacrament not only in the case of the diaconate and presbyterate but also in the case of the episcopate: and that the power which it confers is sacra­ mental not only in the case of the first two but in that of the third also. 3. How is the grace of the episcopate to be defined? Understood in a very broad sense, as including, beyond the effects of episcopal consecration, the privileges which generally belong to bishops, it will divide into three levels. (1) The power of order, with the fullness which it has in bishops and thanks to which it is passed on from age to age since the time of the Apostles by an uninter­ rupted succession termed apostolic, ensures the eucharistie permanence of the sacrifice of the cross and the dispensation of the sacraments of the New Law. This cultus is entirely messianic in as much as it refers to the first coming of Christ and eschatological inasmuch as it prepares for the second coming of Christ. The charismatic power of bishops, which guarantees its continuity, is a perfect and plenary participation in Christ as Priest. 1 According to John of St. Thomas “ the character is a power ordering men to the dirinc cultus, either by action or reception . . . But three sacraments order men to action or reception. There­ fore they imprint a character . . . The sacrament of Order concerns action, for by it men are pre­ pared to consecrate the Eucharist and to dispense to others this sacrament and the other sacraments, and all this is concerned with action ” (III, q. 63, disp. 25, a. 6, no. 4; Vivès ed., vol. ix, p. 381). “Episcopal ordination”, says St. Robert Bellarminc, “ is a ceremony which imprints a spiritual character and confers grace; therefore it is a sacrament. That it imprints a character appears from the facts that (a) it is not repeatable, (b) it gives the power to confer Confirmation and Holy Orders ” {De Sacramento Ordinis, lib. i, cap. 5). ?\ccording to Bcllarminc, it docs not greatly matter whether the effect of episcopal consecration be the imprinting of a new character or simply the extension of the priestly character; the argument holds good in both cases. Further on, he proves that the diaconate is a sacrament, from the fact that it cannot be repeated. To those who claim that non­ repcatability proves the existence of a consecration but not necessarily that of a sacramental char­ acter, he replies that “ the non-rcpcatability of certain sacraments is the principal reason which allows Catholics to hold that they imprint a character ” (ibid., lib. i, cap. 6). IOS I in I V1 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE (2) At the level of conformity to Christ as King and Prophet, the Apostles had an extraordinary jurisdiction, or apostolate, destined for the founding of the Church, to which there has succeeded a permanent jurisdiction or pontificate (divinely assisted) which is destined for the preservation of the Church; die jurisdiction, here taken in its full sense, comprises the power to declare the revealed deposit, and the canonical powers. The universal jurisdiction or sovereign pontificate primarily resides entirely in the Pope alone; but it is participated by the episcopal college united to the Pope and associated with his mission and his concern with catholicity and die expansion of the Church. Moreover, the bishops possess a particular jurisdiction over their own dioceses. (3) At the level of conformity to the sanctity of Christ, the Apostles, who were the princes of the hierarchy, were also the princes of charity. If, then, the bishops receive at their episcopal consecration the graces which will dispose them to the holy exercise of their functions as pastors of given peoples and—collectively— as participants in the universal pastoral power of the Sovereign Pontiff, it is clear that they will be placed in an exterior state of life analogous to that of die Aposdes. St. John Chrysostom regards the bishops’ state of life as more difficult, but of a greater perfection, than that of religious; and St Thomas draw's on this doctrine when he teaches that perfecdon of life, at least initial, is necessary for the episcopal state.1 4. How Are Episcopate and Presbyterate to be Distinguished in the Line of Order? I. According to the Council of Trent, bishops exercise “functions over which those of an inferior order have no power ' ’ ; they have a power to confirm and ordain which they do not hold “in common with priests”. Before this, the Council had declared: “If anyone sax’s that the ordinary' minister of Confirmadon is not the bishop alone, but any priest, let him be ana­ thema” (Session VII, De Confirmadonc, can. 3, Denz., 873). This statement the Code of Canon Law' clarifies thus: “The ordinary minister of Confirmation is the bishop alone. The extraordinary minister is the priest to whom tiiis faculty has been granted either by ordinary law’ or by a particular induit of the Apostolic See” (Can. 782, §§1 and 2). A similar statement is made by the Code concerning the power to ordain. The ordinary minister of holy ordination is a consecrated bishop; the extraordinary minister is he who, even though lacking the episcopal character, has received by law or by a particular induit of the Apostolic See the power to confer certain Orders” (Can. 951). Thus the power of being ordinary ministers of Confirmation and Order is reserved to the bishops. Priests can, by means of a jurisdictional delegation, be the extraordinary ministers of Confirmation and certain Orders. Which Orders, is not said. Historical research inclines theologians to think of not only the Minor Orders and the subdiaconate but also of the diaconate and even the priesthood. 2. What difference is there between the ordinary and the extraordinary powers of conferring Confirmation and certain Orders? A reply based on John of St. Thomas would be that the physical power of confirming and conferring certain Orders is to be found in cither bishop or priest. In the bishop, who is the ordinary' minister of these sacraments, the power is always 1 q. 185, a. I, ad 2. THE POWER OF ORDER unfettered in exercise and not subject to limitation; as far as validity is concerned it can be exercised immediately and unconditionally. In the priest, who is the extraordinary minister of these sacraments, this power is always subject to limita­ tion and is ordinarily so limited; as far as validity is concerned, it cannot be exer­ cised save in dependence on a concession, authorization or jurisdictional delegation of the Sovereign Pontiff.1 Something similar is the case with the sacrament of Penance; the priest has the physical power of administering it, but he cannot exercise it save in dependence on a moral condition—that is, if he has jurisdiction. It is therefore not surprising if wc meet in the case of the extraordinary minister of Confirmation and certain Orders what we come across in the case of the or­ dinary’’ minister of Penance. When the Council of Trent teaches that bishops have a power to confirm and ordain which they do not hold “in common with priests” and that they exercise functions over which priests have “no power” we should understand this in the sense that in distinction from bishops priests have, for Confirmation and the conferring of certain Orders, an extraordinary power only, which is subject to limitation as far as its validity is concerned; they do not possess any ordinary power which is not subject to limitation and always unrestricted as far as its validity is concerned. 3. Does the distinction here proposed hold good in the line of order? It does, undoubtedly. The question is one of the valid exercise of the power of order, the physical power of confirming and ordaining. The fact that this physical power can be freely exercised in the case of the bishop and that it is limited in its exercise in the case of priests, in whom its exercise is subject to conditions, creates a difference between priest and bishop in the line of order itself. If we are to say (which one hesitates to do) that a priest has not the physical power to ordain another priest, and that the bishop alone has this physical power, then the distinction between priests and bishops would certainly be more of a radical nature; it would involve not merely the exercise of the power of order but its nature as well. 5- Is the Distinction Between Priests and Bishops in the Line of Order of Divine Law or Canon Law? I. There arc two theories to be considered: A. That this distinction is, directly, of divine law. Wc are to suppose that Christ instituted unchangeably two degrees in the priesthood, either Himself or by way of His Apostles. There would thus be, first, a lower degree (the presbyterate) with the powers of consecrating the Eucharist and remitting sins,2 and the powers—subject to limitation—of confirming and conferring certain Orders: and, second, the higher degree (the episcopate) with the ordinary' powers—not subject to limitation—of confirming and ordaining. The episcopal powers for the consecration of virgins, of churches etc., are evidently of ecclesiastical institution. B. That this distinction is directly of ecclesiastical law. Wc arc to suppose that Christ conferred on all His ministers the fullness of the priesthood. Later, 1 Papal delegation can be given permanently and quasi a jure. 2 Council of Trent, session xxiii, cap. i, can. 1; Denz., 957 and 961. IO7 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE a decision of the Church divided the priesthood into two degrees. As a conse­ quence, it is a canonical disposition alone that brings it about that the powers of confirming and ordaining are unequal in the episcopate and the presbytcratc, being ordinary and not subject to limitation in the first case and extraordinary and subject to limitation in the second. 2. Is it possible to resolve the question by an appeal to history? Lcnncrz, having assembled the texts concerning the origin of the distinction between the episcopate and the presbyterate, wrote as follows: “The difference between bishop and priest, and the superiority of the bishop over the priest, was admitted by all from the third century. Priests have the priesthood, but in its inferior degree; they do not possess pontifical dignity. This difference is to be located in the line of order and concerns the power to confirm and ordain . . . Is it a difference of divine law?”1 He concludes: “The texts scarcely offer a sufficient foundation for answering with certitude the question, whether the difference between priest and bishop and the superiority of bishop over priest in the line of order, is instituted by Christ and of divine law.”2 Thus two ways are left open; but they cannot, of course, both be right. 3. What is the theological state of the question? The Fathers of the Council of Trent who held that bishops arc superior to priests by divine law and asked that this should be defined, declared that the heresy of Acrius lay in affirming “ that bishops are not superior to priests in divine law”? Laynez replied that “the heresy of Aerius was to claim that all priests arc equal by dirinc law, which implied that the Popes have no power of juris­ diction superior to that of other priests. ’ 1 They could have been answered more directly by saying that even if the difference between priests and bishops were of ecclesiastical law only, Acrius could have been a heretic simply in virtue of refusing to the Church the right of instituting a difference of this type.5 Those who see nothing more than a distinction of ecclesiastical law between bishops and priests cite St. Jerome, who invokes the Epistles of St. Paul, St. Peter and St John to maintain that in the beginning the ecclesiastical hierarchy com­ prises two degrees only, priest-bishops and deacons; and that it was later on, in order to prevent schism, that it became necessary to set one priest-bishop before the rest in each region? The supporters of the distinction in dirinc law answer to the objections drawn from St Paul that at the beginning the priesthood did in point of fact comprise two degrees, but that the names of priest and bishop were used for either. Theodorct, basing his position on Philippians ii. 25, thinks rather that St. Paul called 1 op. CÎL, p. 96, nos. 102 and 163. 1 ibid., p. 98, no. 167. 1 Ehscs, Acta Concilii TridenTun^ vol. ix, p. 76, line 33. According to St. Augustine (De Haeresibus, no. 53), Aerius held, among other errors, that “ there is no difference that distinguishes the priest from the bishop". St. Epiphanius (Adzcnus Haereses, bk. i, vol. i, haer. 75, P.G. XLII, col. 508) speaks of Aerius as a madman because he said that “ the bishop and the priest are equal. How could this be possible? For the order of bishops has for its end the engendering of fathers/’ * Ehscs, op. dt, vol. ix, p. 100, lines 35 et seq. 1 The Council of Trent anathematized, for example, those who should deny that the Church can institute a liturgical feast in honour of the Eucharist, or carry it in procession (session xiii, canon 6: Dcnz., 888). • St Jerome was dted at the Council of Trent by the zVchbishop of Rossano, who was to become Pope Urban VII, and opposed definition of the superiority of bishops as jure divino. Cf. Ehscs, op. at, p. 55. These texts from St. Jerome will be found in Lennerz, op. dt, pp, 38-41, nos. 72-5. 108 : THE POWER OF ORDER apostles those whom we call bishops and bishops those whom we call priests. In both cases we should find in St. Paul the hierarchy of three degrees, which appears so clearly in St. Ignatius of Antioch. It is perhaps possible to give a more general answer. St. Paul’s intention from the start could have been only to create a hierarchy of order in three degrees—with a view to providing against the danger of schism, as St. Jerome was to say. The inferior degree is that of the deacons; die intermediary degree, that of the priest-bishops ; while in the superior degree was the Apostle himself, who, to start with, organized his Churches like a vast diocese. But as the years passed and the field of his apostolate extended, he chose from among the priest-bishops successors like Timothy and Titus, to whom he reserved the actual rights of the pontificate. Thus, both in the thought of the Apostle and in divine law, his Churches, after a preparatory period in which the functions of the priest-bishops remain undifferentiated, were to move towards the unitary episcopate and an organization like that of the Churches of Jerusalem, Asia Minor and Rome. As for St. Jerome’s opinion on the purely canonical origin of the difference between bishops and priests, this is no more than an exaggeration of emphasis. There had been a dispute at Rome between deacons and priests in which the first-mentioned claimed superiority over the second. This provoked a lively reaction from Ambrosiaster and St. Jerome, who, in his anxiety to emphasise the difference between deacon and priest, tended to make the latter equal to the bishop.12 Among the canonists of the period from the twelfth to the fifteenth century, several following Jerome were of the opinion that the distinction between bishops and priests is of ecclesiastical law; others held that it went back to the Apostles. Others again maintained that with delegation from the sovereign Pontiff each man can confer what he possesses—the ordained his Order and—according to some—the confirmed his confirmation.3 The Scholastics were more cautious: die bishop is the ordinary minister of Confirmation and Order, and a simple priest may confirm and confer Minor Orders4 if he has papal delegation. This was the teaching of the Council of Florence on Confirmation5 and Orders.6 From the Middle Ages the thesis that there is a distinction of divine right in the line of order between bishops and priests seems to have prevailed. We have seen why the Council of Trent refused to define this, despite the pressure of certain of the Fathers. Nevertheless the Code of Canon Law seems to have taken it over when it says “. . .in virtue of a divine institution, the sacred hierarchy comprises in the line of order bishops, priests and ministers.” This is the view which I would myself uphold. 1 These replies were provided by Bellarminc, among others (De Clericis, cap. 15). Lennerz has the texts of St. John Chrysostom and St. Jerome maintaining that the names of “ priest ” and “ bishop ” were in fact used interchangeably, and also the texts of Theodoret (op. tit., pp. 26, 41, 46, nos. 50, 75, 85). SJ. Lccuycr, “La grâce de la consécration épiscopale” in Revue des sciences philosophiques el thiolûg iques, 1952, p. 404. a Texts in C. Baisi, op. tit., pp. 28-35. 4 cf. St. Thomas, III, q. 62, a. 11, ad 1. 5 Deaetum Pro Armenis, Dcnz., 697. 4 ibid., 701. ’•’«•y. - THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE 6. The Question of So-called Reordinations The answer given to the question of so-called "reordinations” will be greatly modified according as one adopts one or other of the theses concerning the distinction between bishops and priests in the line of order. I. Let us briefly recall several facts. Leaving on one side the cases which arc disputed at the historical level, we may reckon up five or six Popes who have proclaimed the nullity of ordinations made by anti-popes cither in fact or pre­ sumption, schismatics, simoniacs, and have proceeded to fresh ordination. At the Roman Council of 769 Stephen III refused to recognize the ordinations of deacons, priests and bishops made by the usurper Constantine II and decided to reordain the bishops only.1 John VIII (who nevertheless did not contest the validity of ordinations conferred by Photius at the time of his excommunication)1 declared null the ordination conferred by the excommunicate Bishop Ansbert on the Bishop of Verceil, and this by a decision “without precedent in the history of the Popes”.3 Sergius III (904-11), following on the grim Council of Stephen VI, attacked the validity of the ordinations of Pope Formosus: “This was to pronounce a revision of ecclesiastical situations hitherto uncontested. As a result, doubt was cast on the validity of the most essential religious acts. ”4 John XII of scandalous memory’, dethroned by Leo VIII but reinstated for a brief period in 964, took advantage of the opportunity’ to declare null the ordinations of his rival? St. Leo IX, in the course of his struggle against simoniacal ordinations, took a disconcerting decision; clerics ordained gratis by simoniacs were con­ demned to some penance and then allowed to exercise their Orders ; ordinations made for money were for the most part considered as null, and repeated.8 In 1088 Urban II reordained Daibert, who had been raised to the diaconate by the Archbishop of Mayence, who had been consecrated by schismatics.7 Side by side with this series of facts may be set another which stems from the origins of the Roman Church,8 and is to be located with St Augustine9 and the 1 Louis Saltet, Zz; rtordiruitims, Étude sur It scacmerA de Γordre, Paris 1907, pp. 102-4. He is not sure whether the Council considered Constantine as truly bishop. 1 ibid., p. 143. ’ibid., pp. 148-52. 4 ibid., pp. 155-6. ’ibid., pp. 169-70. •ibid., p. 183. 7 ibidr, pp. 239-244. We need not put too much weight on the text in which Innocent III declares valid the sacraments administered by even a sinful priest ” provided that the Church recog­ nizes it” (Denz., 424). • ” From the origins of Christianity, there are two different traditions. That of Rome states that Baptism administered outside the Church can, under certain conditions, be valid and need not be repeated. The rXsian tradition considered Baptism administered outside the Church as nuU, and also that administered inside the Church by ministers of a certain degree of unworthincss; and it admitted the repetition of such a Baptism. At this early date there was almost always question of Baptism alone; but these decisions were based upon an idea which could hardly fail to be extended, later, to the other sacraments . . . The African Church first of all followed the Roman usage but later on adopted the Asian. In the middle of the third century under Pope Stephen a conflict arose between the Churches of Rome and Africa, and this was the baptismal controversy ” (Saltct, op. cit., p. 387). In 692 the attitude of the Quiniscxt Council shows that ” the Greek Church did not admit the reordination of heretics either. This conclusion is justified in the Greek theology of the succeeding period ” (ibid., p. 58). • The Donatists having admitted that ” he who leaves the Church loses not Baptism but the IIO THE POWER OF ORDER great Scholastics1 and Popes such as Anastasius II*12 and Pascal II.3 Those who follow this authentic tradition maintain that certain sacraments, Order among them, can be dispensed validly even by schismatics. Here we must note two tilings: (i) In none of the cases of so-called Preordina­ tion” was there any thought of annulling (in the proper sense of the word), and then repeating, ordinations which should have been valid. It was simply declared that ordinations which had been considered as valid had not in fact been so, and then true ordinations took place. The traditional doctrine, according to which the sacrament of Order confers an ineffaceable character and thus can­ not be repeated, was fully appreciated and never forgotten: (2) In the case of Ansbert, who was truly a bishop but excommunicate, and in the case of bishops ordained within the Church but afterwards fallen into schism or simony, there was no question of contesting the validity of their own Orders, but the validity of their exercise: in other words they were from that point onwards denied the right of conferring valid ordinations. How are these facts to be explained? 2. According to the first explanation, it will be remembered, bishops hold by divine law a power of confirming and ordaining which is proper to them. This power is ordinary, that is, not subject to limitation and always free from limitation. A heretical bishop, or a schismatic bishop, even one who is a simoniac or generally sinful, ordains illicitly but validly. Thus ordinations by such bishops ought not to be “ repeated ”. In consequence those Popes would be right who refused to do it, and those wrong who countenanced it. The latter decision would be misleading even if taken in good faith, and much more so if under the influence of personal animosity. But we should also note that no erroneous dogmatic definition was made by the Popes concerned. The dogma of the ineffaceable quality of the sacramental character and the impossibility of repeating true ordination was always safeguarded.4 The only disputed question would be whether the Sovereign Pontiff can control the power of validly conferring Orders in schismatic or excommunicate bishops. My own answer would be that he cannot, since the exercise of this power is of divine law. But those who hold that it is purely of canonical law would answer in the affirmative. At present the question is still open, from the dogmatic point of view. It is surprising to see how many writers, basing themselves one on another, power of conferring it ”, St. Augustine answered that neither the one nor the other was lost: “ These two things arc in fact a sacrament. Both are given by way of a consecration, the one to him who is baptized, the other to him who is ordained. Thus it is forbidden, in the Catholica^ to repeat either die one or the other ” {Contra Epistolam Parmeniani, lib. ii, cap. 13, no. 28). 1 St. Thomas replies to the question “ Can heretics and those who are excluded from the Church confer Orders? ” {In IVSent., d. 25, q. 1, a. 2) by enumerating four opinions: (1) They can confer Orders insofar as they are tolerated by the Church and not after their exclusion: (2) If they have been consecrated bishops within the Church, they retain the power to confer Orders, but the bishops ordained by them will not have this power: (3) They confer Orders validly, and even sacra­ mental grace, on those who culpably have recourse to their good offices: (4) They* validly confer Orders but not sacramental grace on those who culpably have recourse to them. This last view is the only correct one. 1 Saltct, op. cit., pp. 76-7. ’ ibid., p. 267. 4 cf. Leo XIII in his Apostolic Letter on the subject of Anglican ordinations: ” Since the Church has always held it a constant and inviolable principle that it is forbidden to repeat the sacrament of Order, it would be impossible for the Apostolic Sec to allow and tolerate in silence a custom of this kind. I THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE have spoken in this connection of an obscuring of the dogma in question. Baisi cites a number of them: Many, Chardon, Saltet, Tixeront, Michel. As against them he maintains his own thesis, that the Popes concerned should never have done anything but go on to valid ordinations. Yet he himself fails to sec that whatever the theory· adopted—of ordinations sometimes invalidly repeated, or ordinations valid all the time of an obscuring of dogma in this dubious question of rcordinations is completely to distort the theological perspective of die matter.1 3. According to die second explanation bishops hold the ordinary' power of confirming and ordaining which is proper to diem, by simple canon law, and the Sovereign Pontiff can bind or loose this power at will. Hence, there seems to be no difficulty in explaining the conduct of the Popes. The Popes concerned could proclaim the nullity of ordinations and concern themselves with eventually making them valid inasmuch as, and during the period when, they had decided to limit as to validity the power of schismatic or excommunicate bishops—cither of all schismatic bishops or those only who had been ordained by schismatics, either all simoniac bishops or only those in turn ordaining for money. This is the solution put forward by Baisi, among others.2 At first sight it seems to clear up everything, but further consideration reveals it as not very helpful and itself the source of new problems. It docs not explain how John VIII was able to recognize the validity of ordinations conferred by one excommunicate (Photius) and deny' the validity of those conferred by another (Ansbert). It does not justify' Pope Sergius III in denying the validity of ordinations conferred by' another Pope, that is, Formosus. When concerned to pronounce upon the validity of Anglican ordinations the Popes, from Julius III to Leo XIII, have been interested in one point only: were these ordinations carried out according to the Catholic rite? The question of the possible invalidity of an ordination carried out according to the Catholic rite by a schismatical or heretical bishop did not enter their minds.3 And finally', if the Popes were able (at the time of the schism of Michael Caerularius, for instance) to bind, even tacitly and for a time—in accordance with views said to have been those “of the large majority' of the bishops and the ordinary magisterium”— the ordaining power of the orthodox bishops, what guarantee have we of the validity of ordinations in the Orthodox Church, a point today contested by none? 1 “ Is so general and protracted an obscuring of dogma admissible in the Church? These authors seem to have a somewhat original idea of the infallibility of the Pope and the Church in general. For my own part I believe that if in a matter of this kind the Pope made a mistake, and the bishops too, and that for so long a time, then it must be said that the Church made a mistake in her ordinary magisterium. Yet we know that the Church is infallible in her ordinary' magisterium. Ergo . . (Baisi, op. dt, pp. 152-3). There was do obscuring of dogma here. But adopt Baisi’s theory that in the abevementioned cases all the Popes’ ordinations were valid. 1 op. dt, pp. 151-8. ’Leo XIII, LilUr on Anglican OrdinaJionst “ In his letter of 8th March 1554 to the Apostolic Legate, Julius III makes a formal distinction between those who, having been elevated in a regular manner and according to the rite, should be upheld in their orders, and those who, having not been elevated to Holy Orders, could be so elevated if they were worthy and fit. There is here a clear distinction of two real categories of men. To the first belong those who had really received Holy Orders, either before Henry’s schism or after it, through ministers attached to error or schism, but according to the accustomed Catholic rite; to the second, those who, being ordained according to the rite of King Edward, had received an invalid ordination and therefore could in due course be raised to Holy Orders . .. This principle provides the basis for the doctrine that all sacraments conferred according to the Catholic rite are valid even when the minister is a heretic or [in the case of Baptism] unbaptized.” * jtgH THE POWER OF ORDER 4. Thus, in my opinion, the theory which is imposed on any theologian who tries to elucidate the question of so-called reordinations is that of the Code of Canon Law—that which maintains that bishops differ from priests in the line of order by divine law. 7. Two Bulls Authorizing Simple Priests to Confer the Priesthood 1. The Council of Trent defined that bishops have a power of confirming and ordaining which they do not hold in common with priests. The power of bishops is in fact ordinary, not subject to limitation and in fact always unlimited, while that of priests is extraordinary and always subject to limitation. It seems to me that this difference, which concerns the exercise of the power of order, is not of ecclesiastical law alone but also of divine law. Λ simple priest possesses, then, in its limited state, the physical radical power of conferring certain Orders. The question is, which? Minor Orders and the subdiaconate, without doubt. But should we also add the diaconate and the priesthood? If the answer be no, this implies an even greater difference between priests and bishops; it concerns not only the exercise but also the nature of their powers of order. If the answer be yes, then the difference between priests and bishops in die line of order will concern solely the exercise of their powers of order, though it will still be of divine law. 2. As I have said, several medieval canonists admitted that each man could confer the Order which he had himself, provided he had a delegation from the Sovereign Pontiff; a deacon could confer the diaconate and a priest the priest­ hood.1 But the large majority of theologians rejected a principle as general as this and denied to die priest the radical power of conferring even the diaconate, much more the priesthood. Today, however, there has been a change of opinion, and an ever-increasing number of theologians are of the opinion, not indeed that a deacon can confer the diaconate, but that a priest can, with a delegation from the Sovereign Pontiff, confer the priesthood. What is the justification for this change of view? Before all else, it consists in die elucidadon of three important pontifical documents. 3. The most recent Bull among these documents, that of Innocent VIII of 9 April 1489, had been known for a long time past. In it the Pope grants to the Abbot of Citeaux (for the whole Cistercian Order) and to the Abbots of La Fcrté, Pontigny, Clairvaux and Mérimont (for their respective abbeys) and to the successors of all these, the power of themselves conferring the subdiaconate and diaconate on their monks. This Bull, which cannot today be located in the pontifical archives, but whose authenticity seems beyond doubt, was published as from 1491. It alone was enough to decide certain theologians that the diaconate should be included in the Orders which a priest can confer by means of a dele­ gation from the Sovereign Pontiff. In 1924 was published the Bull, hitherto unknown, by which Boniface IX (1 Feb. 1400) authorised the Augustinian Abbot of St. Osyth, in Essex, and his successors, to raise his subjects not only to the subdiaconate and the diaconate but even to the priesthood. It is true that on the 6th February 1403 the Pope revoked this Bull, but this was purely to fall in with the wishes of the Bishop of 1 cf. Baisi, op. cit., p. 32. US il THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE London, who maintained that there had been an infringement of his right of patronage over the abbey’.1 Finally, in 1943 there was published a Bull of Martin V ( 16 Nov. 1427) conceding to the Cistercian Abbot of Akezelle in the diocese of Meissen, over a period of five years, the power of conferring on all his monks, without die previous authorization of the local bishop, all Orders including Major Orders, 0 omnes etiam sacros ordines”.2 4. Before recognizing authentic theological loci in these documents disinterred by the historians, several contemporary' theologians proposed varying inter­ pretations of them. It was said, for example, that die pontifical privileges envisaged exemptions only—that is to say, that they accorded to the abbots concerned not the unheard-of power of conferring Major Orders by themselves, but that of having them conferred by a bishop of their own choice, independendy of the local bishop;3 or again, that these abbots might have had the episcopal character; or that the Bull of Boniface IX, since it was withdrawn by' die same Pope, had only a limited scope and may lie set aside:4 and so on. It seems, more and more, as if these interpretations should be abandoned. Here are Lennerz s conclusions,5 with which I myself agree: 41 We now know two Bulls, one of Boniface IX, the other of Martin V, con­ ferring on a simple priest the power of ordaining deacons and priests; and a third Bull, that of Innocent VIII, conferring the power of ordaining deacons. There is no doubt at all as to the authenticity' of the first two Bulls. But even Innocent VII Is Bull cannot today be held as seriously suspect, and it is certain that the Cistercian abbots availed themselves for centuries of the privilege which had been granted to them. And the terms of the Bulls are clear; it is indeed a case of the conferring of Orders. “Thus three Popes have authorised a simple priest to confer either the diaconatc, or the diaconate and the priesthood. Hence it would seem that wc must conclude that a priest, given a delegation from the Sovereign Pontiff, can be the minister of these Orders. It could not be maintained that these three Popes have erred in a matter as serious as that of the minister of the sacrament of Order. As long as the Bull of Innocent VIII, the authenticity of which was not moreover clear, was the only one known to theologians, it is understand­ able that they should have hesitated to recognize in the Sovereign Pontiff the right to concede a privilege of this order to a simple priest. Today we know that three Popes did it; and therefore they were really empowered to do it . . . “To sum up: Sovereign Pontiffs have conceded this privilege to simple priests. Thus they can so concede it. And thus a simple priest can, given a delegation from the Sovereign Pontiff, be the minister of the Orders of the diaconate and the priesthood.” 1 The texts of these two Bulls were published and discussed by Bais, op. cic, pp. 7-28 and 104-16. 1 cf. Yves Congar, O.P., ” Faits, problèmes et réflexions à propos du pouvoir d’Ordre et des rapports entre le presbyterat et l'épiscopat ”, in Aiaiwn-Dûu, Paris 1948, no. 14, p. 114. See also Lennerz, op. cit., p. 146, no. 240. 1 cf. V. Zubizaretta, O.C.E., Thtologia Bilbao 1928, vol. iv, p. 407. This is the explanation which 1 had adopted. 4 cf. E. Hugon, O.P., ” Études récentes sur le sacrement de l'ordre”, in Reçue Thomiste. 1924, PP· 481-93· The Bull’s importance is on the contrary emphasized by M. J. Gerlaud, O.P. ministre extraordinaire du sacrement de l’ordre ”, in Hnw Thomiste, 1931, pp. 874-85. I I [I 1 THE POWER OF ORDER 5. I would thus maintain both that: (1) a priest delegated by the Sovereign Pontiff can confer the priesthood: (2) nevertheless the difference between bishops and priests is of divine law-1 Priests have the physical power of confirming and ordaining. The valid exercise of this power depends, as far as they are concerned, on a moral condition, that is, a concession of the Sovereign Pontiff. It is indeed in the line of order—in what concerns the valid exercise of their power to confirm and ordain—that priests are inferior to bishops. But it is, on the contrary, by a purely jurisdictional act that the Sovereign Pontiff limits their power of ordaining and confirming. When die priest is released by the Pope from limitation, he acts in the line of order; in thus freeing him from limitation, the Pope acts in the line of jurisdiction. 6. Here again we come across the distinction which recognizes in the Church, by divine law, two sorts of powers, those of order and those of jurisdiction. I do not think there is any need to go beyond this distinction, which is embedded deep in tradition, in order to attribute to the Sovereign Pontiff ‘"a certain power of making valid doubtful sacraments” by which he could, for example, “declare valid a baptism administered with wine.”2 The distinction between what is of divine law and unalterable, and what is of ecclesiastical law and changeable, is also traditional. Moreover, it is certain that canonical institutions, which are a result of the Church’s prudence, are not all changeable in an equal degree. The historian is impelled, and legitimately so, to divide them into different categories according to the degree of their importance and their stability. All the more, therefore, is it impossible, from the logical point of view, to postulate a tertium quid, which could not be classified under either divine law or canonical law.3 1 As opposed to Yves Congar, who writes in the article cited from Afaison-Dini, p. 125: “ It is clear that if the episcopate and the presbyteralc are strictly distinct Orders by virtue of divine institution, the acts proper to the bishop cannot be carried out by a simple priest who remains a simple priest, and it does not appear how a papal authorisation would change his quality of simple priest.” My answer would be: “ The power of confirming and ordaining of simple priests is in itself extraordinary' and subject to limitation as to its validity; in removing the limitation, the Pope does not change its nature. The bishops’ power of confirming and ordaining is in itself ordinary and not subject to limitation; and this is enough for us to declare, with the Council of Trent, that bishops have a power which they do not hold in common with priests. And this difference can be, as the Code of Canon Law envisages, of divine institution.” J “ When, for example, Stephen II, in 753, declares valid a baptism administered with wine ...” (Yves Congar, ibid., pp. 120 and 121). I do not think that a Pope can declare such a Baptism valid: “ If any one shall say that true and natural water is not a necessity for Baptism ... let him be anathema ” (Council of Trent, session vii, De Baptismo, canon 2, Denz., 858). And I do not think that Stephen II did this. See the eleventh of the “ Replies of Pope Stephen II ”, published under the year 754 by Mansi, vol. xii, col. 561 : “ Si in vino quis, propterea quod aquam non inven­ iebat, omnino periclitantem infantem baptizavit, nulla ei exinde adseribitur culpa. (Infantes sic permaneant in ipso baptismo.) Nam si aqua adfuit praesens, ille presbyter excommunicetur, poentientiae submittatur, quia contra canonum sententiam agere praesumpsit.” It is clear, as Mansi notes, that the words in parentheses, which do not agree grammatically with what goes before, arc an interpolation; it appears to be due to the influence of the replies preceding and following this one, in which similar expressions are found: “ in hoc baptismo permaneant ”, ” in co permaneant baptismo ”, and in which the Pope concludes to the validity of baptism given by unworthy or ignorant priests, provided it has been according to the rites of the Church. 3 “ It would appear that because of the development of our theology and perhaps the demands of polemic also, we have been led to make too radical a distinction—and one which allows of no third alternative—between an order of things divinely determined and a discipline which is the legitimate field of a law which is purely positive and ecclesiastical, a law of circumstances and opportunity. But there is surely between them, and joining them, a considerable domain where ri ίί 9 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE 8. of Divine Law, and Sacraments: the THE PRESBYTERATE AND THE DlACONATE Three Orders Episcopate, 1. We may recall the words of the Code of Canon Law (can. 108, §3): “By virtue of a divine institution, the sacred hierarchy comprises in the line of order bishops, priests and ministers”. We have sufficiently discussed the episcopate and the presbyterate. Theologians consider it as a commonly held and certain thesis that the diaconate also is a sacrament.1 Cajetan is sometimes cited as if he were of the contrary opinion.2 It is true that he thought that the ‘deacons of the table ” mentioned in Acts vi. 2-6 should be distinguished from the “deacons of the altar ”. And to this it might be replied that we sec the “deacons of the tabic ” preaching in the case of Stephen (Acts vii) and baptizing in the case of Philip (viii. 12). But Cajetan immediately adds “Although the deacons of the altar were not instituted in tills instance, il seems nevertheless that they were instituted by the Apostles, although we know neither the lime nor the place. In point of fact Paul mentions bishops and deacons (Phil. i. 1) ; and in 1 Tun. iii. 1-10 he describes in succession die duties of bishops and those of deacons. Now these two Churches—that of the Philippians and that of Ephesus —to which Timothy belonged, were Churches of the Gentiles, in which it does not appear that Christians lived in common, as they did at Jerusalem. And thus they had no need of deacons to occupy themselves with the serving of tables and with widow’s. Their deacons must therefore have been deacons of the altar . . . The Apostles appear to have ordained deaeons, not, as now, by saying ‘Receive the power of reading the Gospel’, but by the imposition of hands."3 2. The primitive and apostolic rite of ordination is the imposition of hands. The rite of the proffering of the instruments, which symbolized the power accorded by the various Orders, was added in the West as from the high Middle Ages. As to the question of whether it was an adventitious rite, or an essential rite which relegated became the imposition of hands to a secondary place, opinions are divided. It is admitted by all that the seven sacraments were instituted by Christ and that the Church cannot, as to their administration, modify anything save that which leaves their substance intact—“salva illorum substantia” (Council of realities stemming from Christ Himself arc under the canonical power of the Church: an area in which many things represent neither formal determinations of Christ nor simple instances of a purely positive and variable law, but rather ecclesiastical traditions" (Congar, op. cit., p. 126). It will be agreed without difficulty that one and the same institution can stem, under one aspect, from divine and unchangeable law, and under another aspect, from canonical and changeable law. A little further on (p. 127), we read " Moreover, since the Middle Ages were not dominated, as we are, by the idea of revelation as closed at the deaths of the Apostles, and had not reached in this matter ideas as clear-cut as ours, they took a freer and larger view of the inspirational role of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church." But these formal distinctions between the power of order and the power of jurisdiction, divine law and canon law, the deposit of God's revelation and its * unfolding by the Church, arc all medieval. 1 Billuart, De Sacramento Ordinis, dissert, x, a. 3, §1: Brunet's edition, vol. vii, p. 320; Lcnnerz, op. cit., p. ii6, no. 185. ’ Billuart, Lennerz, etc. Also Baisi, op. cit., p. 51, where he writes of Cajetan “ Ha perô la veramente strana idea che il diaconato non sia stato immediatam™ tc islituito dagli apostoli Now Cajetan says exactly the opposite. 1 Cajetan, Opiisiula, vol. i, tract, xi, " De Modo Tradendi seu Suscipiendi Sacros Ordines ΛΎ1· THE POWER OF ORDER Trent, Session VII, De Sacramentis in Genere, can. 1; Session XXI, cap. 2: Dcnz., 844 and 931). In his Apostolic Constitution on the Holy Orders of the Diaconate, Presbyterate and Episcopate,1 30 November 1947, His Holiness Pope Pius XII recalls these points in the process of setting out clearly what is the substance of the sacraments: “The Church has no power over the substance of the sacraments, that is, over what Christ Our Lord Himself wished should be kept permanent in the sacramental sign, as the sources of divine revelation witness” (no. 1). This is the point at which there begins the divergence of opinion between theologians. Some conclude that the Church can change nothing in cither the form or the matter of any of the sacraments. Hence, the proffering of the instruments can never have been anything more than an adventitious rite. The difficulty here is that the Council of Florence, explaining in the Decreta Pro Armenis what it calls the “truth of the sacraments”,2 declares that “the sixth sacrament is that of Order, the matter of which is the giving of the object which confers the Order’, the presbyterate being conferred by the giving of the chalice with the wine and the paten with the bread, the diaconate by the giving of the Gospels . . . etc. And this is the form of the priesthood : Receive the power of offering the sacrifice in the Church for the living and for the dead, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”3 It has been suggested in answer that this is not a conciliar document proper, that it was only an instruction intended for the teaching of the Armenians on the discipline and liturgy of the Latin Church, and so on. But a closer examina­ tion of the question has impelled theologians like Cardinal van Rossum to recog­ nize the doctrinal character of the decree. In consequence the only further way left open is to maintain that since it does not have the form of a definition of faith properly so-called, die doctrinal teaching of the Council of Florence is erroneous.4 Other theologians distinguish in the sacraments of the New Law the signification which represents its most formal part, and the sign, which is composed of matter and form, things and words.5 Christ Himself instituted all the sacramental signs of the New Law. Where certain of these signs are concerned, He wishes to determine them not only as to their signification but also as to the sign itself; thus, in the case of Baptism. In the case of the other sacramental signs, He determined them as to their signification, leaving to His Church and the jurisdictional power infallibly assisted the faculty of determining in greater detail the matter and form of the sign, according to the needs of time and place. Otherwise we cannot explain how die anointing with chrism has become, in both East and West, the essential rite of the sacrament of Confirmation, and that the form of the sacrament of Penance has been, successively, deprecative and then indicative. The same 1 Dcnz.» 695. 3 Dcnz., 701. 4 P. Galtier, art. “Imposition des Mains”, in Did. de Thiol. Cath., cols. 1408-12. Lennerz is more hesitant (op. cit., p. 138, no. 225): Did the Council of Florence wish to give an authoritative teaching, though not necessarily an infallible one? Did it intend simply to sum up the doctrine of the Latin theologians? “ What was the true intention of the Council? It is scarcely possible to answer with certitude.” 1 “ The physical composition of the sacrament may be considered also as comprising the signi· /italien which embraces the whoh, which is composed of things and of words; so that the two com­ posing extremes are things and words on the one hand and the signification on the other ” (John of St. Thomas, III, q. 60, prol. to disp. 22; Vivès ed. vol. ix, p. 2). 1 I : JI fir V THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE holds good in the case of the sacrament of Order; the signification has always remained constant, and has always manifested a transmission of the powers of celebrating the cultus, but the sign in which it has been expressed has changed in the West, the tradition of the instruments having been substituted for the imposition of hands. This is the explanation which I myself would adopt. It allows us to hold that the Council of Florence was not in error; yet there is nothing to prevent the Church from making valid once more the rite of the imposition of hands. And this was to be done by His Holiness Pope Pius XII in his Apostolic Constitution of 30 November 1947. 3. The Constitution first takes up the discontinuing of the rite of the imposition of hands, but without condemning the second of die explanations just proposed: “It is known to all that the Roman Church has always held as valid the ordina­ tions made in the Greek rite without the tradition of the instruments. More; the Church has desired that even at Rome the Greeks should be ordained accord­ ing to their own rite. From this it follow’s that even in the thought of the Council of Florence, it was not in virtue of a choice of Christ Our Lord that the tradition of the instruments was necessary to the substance and the validity of the sacrament. If the will and precept of the Church have, for a time, made it necessary to the very validity of ordinations, yet it is still known to all that the Church can change and abrogate what she has established" (no. 4). A little further on we read “We declare and—in that case where the legitimate authority would in the past haze arranged matters differently—we decide that the tradition of the instruments is not, for the future at any rate, necessary to the validity of the Holy Orders of the Diaconate, Presbyterate and Episcopate ” (no. 5). His Holiness then las’s down what are to be henceforward the matter and form of Holy Orders: “In virtue of our supreme apostolic authority and after due con­ sideration we declare and where necessary decree and institute what follow’s: the matter, and only matter, of the Holy Orders of the diaconate, presbyterate and episcopate is the imposition of hands, and similarly the sole form is the words which determine the application of this matter and which signify in a univocal fashion the sacramental effects—that is to say the power of order and the grace of the Holy Spirit, together with the sense w’hich these words possess in the thought and usage of the Church” (no. 4). ‘‘For ordination to the diaconate the matter is the imposition of the hands of the bishop solely as envisaged in the rite of this ordina­ tion. The form consists of the words of the Preface, of which the following are essential and in consequence required for validity: ‘Pour down upon him, we pray You, O Lord, the Holy Spirit, that He may fortify him with the seven gifts of Your grace and enable him to acquit himself faithfully in the work of Your ministry For ordination to the priesthood, the matter is the first imposition of the hands of the bishop carried out in silence but not the continuation of this imposition where the right hand is extended nor the last imposition accompanied by the words ‘ Receive the Holy Spirit; whose sins you shall remit’ etc. The form consists of the words of the Preface, of which the following are essential and in consequence required for validity: ‘We pray You, almighty Father, give to Your servant here present the dignity of the priesthood; renew in his heart the spirit of sanctity, that he may acquit himself of the charge of the second hierarchical degree which You entrust to him, and that the example of his life may be to the amend­ ment of men's ways’. Finally, for the ordination or consecration of the episcopate, the matter is the imposition of hands made by the consecrating bishop. The form 118 ■ THE POWER OF ORDER consists of the words of the Preface, of which the following are essential and in consequence required for validity: “Give to Your priest the fullness of Your ministry, and sanctify by the dew of celestial unction him whom You have decked with the ornaments of the supreme honour” (no. 5). 4. Henceforward as a result of the decision of His Holiness, the difference between the Latin rite and the Oriental rite is abolished. In virtue of this there is a strengthening of the link which unites the dissident Orthodox Church to the Catholic Church. The form of ordination to the priesthood is thus now “We pray You, almighty Father, give to Your servant here present the dignity of the priesthood; renew in his heart the spirit of sanctity, that he may acquit himself of the charge of the second hierarchical degree which You entrust to him, and that the example of his life may be to the amendment of men’s ways”. It would appear to approximate to the present Anglican form of ordination. But in his Apostolic Letter of 13 September 1896, after having noted that the imposition of hands is a rite as yet undetermined, employed both for Holy Orders and for Confirmation, Leo XIII added “Up to the present the majority of Anglicans have regarded as the proper form of ordination to the priesthood the words ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’. But they arc far from signifying precisely the Order of the priesthood, its grace and the power it confers, that is to say, the power of consecrating and offering the true Body and true Blood of the Lord, by a sacrifice that is something other than a pure commemoration of the sacrifice accomplished on the cross. It is true that there were later added to this formula the words ‘ For the office and charge of the priesthood’. But this is in itself a proof that the Anglicans themselves considered this form as defective and not satisfactory. And even if this addition could have given to the formula the required signification, it came too late; for a century’ had already passed since die adopdon of the Ordinal of Edward, and, since the hier­ archy had lapsed, the power to ordain no longer existed.” g. Are the Subdiaconate and the Minor Orders MORE THAN SaCRAMENTALS? now no 1. What is to be said about the subdiaconate and the Minor Orders? They are evidently of ecclesiastical institution. St. Thomas says that in the primitive Church the powers of the subdiaconate and the Minor Orders ‘‘existed as it were enfolded within the powers of the deaconal one [implicite in una diaconi potestate]. But later, with the development of die divine cultus, the Church divided ex­ plicitly into several orders what she possessed implicitly in the diaconate. Hence Peter Lombard’s words concerning the Church, who institutes certain orders for herself.”1 2. Should we regard them as sacraments? St. Thomas is of this opinion: “The distinction of Orders is neither that of an integral whole into its p;irts nor that of a universal whole into its multiple subjects, but that of a whole of potency the nature of which is to exist as to its fullness in one subject only and in other subjects according to some participation. This is so in the case of Order: the fullness of the sacrament exists in the Order of the priesthood only but we find elsewhere a certain participation in Order . . . Thus all the Orders 1 IV Sml.9 d. 24, q. 2, a. 1, quacst. 2, ad 2. XI9 r THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE form one single sacrament.”1 It is true that St. Thomas is here speaking directly of the two Orders of the priesthood and the diaconatc only. But a little further on, comparing the Major and Minor Orders, he declares that “all Order may be called holy because it is a sacrament.”2 This would appear to be the teaching of the Council of Florence which sees in the tradition of die instruments and the appropriate words the matter and form of the presbyterate, the diaconatc and the subdiaconate and other Orders.3 The opinion that the subdiaconate and the other Minor Orders arc sacraments was considered by Billuart to be more generally held and more probable.4 Should we, on the contrary, regard the subdiaconate and Minor Orders as sacramcntals? Cajetan was of this opinion. He concluded, from the diversity’ of the Minor Orders in the ancient sacramentaries, that “ these Orders appear to be sacramcntals rather than sacraments.”5 This opinion is the more widely held today.6 3. I shall here adopt the last-mentioned opinion. It seems to me that His Holiness Pope Pius XII has, by giving the primitive rite of the imposition of hands an essential and exclusive rôle in ordination, ipso facto reduced to the rank of simple sacramcntals the subdiaconate and Minor Orders which are given without the imposition of hands. io. Conclusion The progress of historical studies allows us to distinguish in greater detail what is of divine law and unchangeable in the action of the Church and what is of ecclesiastical law and changeable. Many of the Church's forms and reforms can be explained by the varying needs of time and place. But underlying these modifications, greater or less, are the permanent axes of the Church, the stable and divine privileges with which Christ wished to endow her so that she might be the continuator of His priesthood, royalty and sanctity’. Thus, when the Church is in question, the historical explanation, which arises from the varying needs of time and place, is never the ultimate explanation. It must always end by giving place to the ontological explanation, which derives from the structure and divine life of the Body and Bride of Christ, with her power of salvation and conformation to Christ. 1 ibid., quaat. I, ad 2. 1 ibid., quaest. 3. 1 Denz., 701. The Council of Trent made no direct pronouncement: “ If anyone shall say that apart from the priesthood there are not other Orders in the Catholic Church, some Major and some Minor, by which the priesthood is approached as by degrees, let him be anathema ” (Denz., 962). 4 De Sacramento Ordinis, dissert. 1, a. 3, 2; vol. vii, p. 32t. * Opuscula, vol. i, tract. », “ De Modo Tradendi seu Suscipiendi Sacros Ordmes ”. • A historical exposé of this problem will be found in Lcnnerz, op. cit., pp. 117-30, nos. 188-209. It envisages the subdiaconate and the Minor Orders as simple sacramcntals. This is my conclusion also, but I would make two reservations: (i) rVccording to St. Thomas these Orders, while they are of ecclesiastical institution, could be sacraments, representing the deployment of the divine powers of the diaconatc: (2) In die past of the Latin Church they have probably been true sacra­ ments. 120 c-fi Chapter IV THE POWER OF JURISDICTION, SECOND MINISTERIAL CAUSE OF THE CHURCH I. THE ORIGIN OF THE JURISDICTIONAL POWER I. CHRIST HEAD OF THE CHURCH, AT ONCE PRIEST AND KING: HIS CONFERRING OF TWO PO WERS ON THE CHURCH, THE ONE SACRA­ MENTAL, THE OTHER JURISDICTIONAL I. Jesus Christ was predestined to be, as St. Paul loved to say, the Head of the whole Church.1 This revelation of the Apostle is enough in itself to establish the supreme principle of the distinction between the sacramental and the jurisdictional powers. As the head has its twofold action on the body—an interior motor action (the chief impulsions start from the brain), and an exterior directive action (our steps are regulated by information coming through the senses)—so Christ exerts a twofold action on the mem­ bers of His Church. a. On the one hand, by an influence that is hidden and propulsive, He sends mysterious ontological riches into the very depths of souls. This secret and propulsive influence can, as we have noted above, be distinguished into 1 By the grace of union with a divine Person, Christ is the Head of the Church radically and presuppositiwly; by the habitual grace that results therefrom He is the Head formally and proximately. He exerts a twofold action on the body of the Church: He vivifies it as Saviour and as Priât, and He rules it as King. First, from the fact that Christ is God and that the habitual grace that exists in Him is the instrument of the divine omnipotence, it is invested with such eminence, superiority and plenitude, that it can be poured out on all men: somewhat after the manner of heat, which lias its source in a fire and nevertheless passes over in an univocal and homogeneous manner into everything in its reach. To designate this quality of Christ's grace, theologians, borrowing an image from St. Paul, call it capital grace, “ gratia capitalis, hoc est influxiva in omnes ” (Cajetan, in III, q. 8, a. 5, no. 2). This derivation of capital grace is to be understood in two ways: it means that the merit of Christ’s Passion is applicable to all men; and it means besides that a wholly spiritual virtue really emanates from Christ to touch all hearts: “ Derivatio qua a capite . . . derivatur ad nos omnis gratia est duplex, scilicet meritoria ct instrumentalis physica” (John of St. Thomas, III, q. 8; disp. 10, a. i, no. 21; vol. VIII, p. 255). Next, from the fact that Christ is God and the source not of grace alone, but also of truth— “Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ” (John, i. 17)—He is not content with vivifying the Church from within, He wills also to direct it from without, as King. In the Old Law, observes St. Thomas, the legislator and the priest, Moses and Aaron, remained distinct, but in the New Law the two arc united in Jesus “ the fountain of all grace, wherefore it is said in Isaias: ‘ The Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our King; He will come and save us ’ ” (III, q. 22, a. i, ad 3). 121 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE one coming from Christ as Priest, communicating the three sacramental characters, the three sacramental powers; and another coming from Christ ΐΐΜΐ as Saviour, communicating the living sap of redemptive grace. Thus used the titles of Priest and Saviour arc distinguished. But they can be taken together and opposed to the title of King: Christ is Priest-Saviour and He is King. b. On the other hand, He proposes from without two sorts of proposition. The first are speculative propositions to be believed: “And forthwith upon the Sabbath days going into the synagogue, he taught them. And they were astonished at his doctrine. For he was teaching them as one having power, and not as the scribes” (Mark i. 21-22); “All things are delivered to me by my Father. And no one knoweth the Son, but the Father: neither doth any know the Father, but the Son and he to whom it shall please the Son to reveal him” (Matt. xi. 27); "Have I been so long a time with you, and you have not known me? Philip, he that seeth me, seeth the Father also. How sayest thou, shew us the Father? Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?” (John xiv. 9-10); “And these shall go into ever­ lasting punishment: but the just into life everlasting” (Matt. xxv. 46); “For this is my blood of the new testament which shall be shed for many unto remission of sins” (Matt. xxvi. 28). The second are practical propositions to be put into execution: “Do penance: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. iii. 2); “Go, sell whatsoever thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me” (Mark x. 21) ; “Who­ soever shall look on a woman to lust after her, hath already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt. v. 28); “Enter ye in at the narrow gate . . .” (Matt. vii. 13). In both sorts we see the rôle of Christ the King. In virtue of His spiritual kingship.1 He declares not only what is to be done, but what is to be believed—a thing which, coming from a political power, would be intolerable; and He declares not merely simple and natural things, but baffling and supernatural things: the Trinity, the redemptive Incarnation, the Eucharist, poverty, obedience, chastity: “I confess to thee O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to little ones” (Matt. xi. 25). To spiritual kingship, thus understood, prophecy is to be referred. For if the prophet is, as the modems put it, one who announces divine revelations to men, Christ is sovereign Prophet, and His prophetic title is identical with His royal title. But if the prophet is, as the ancients preferred to say, one who, an exile among men, announces things to come or things far off, Christ was Prophet only during the time that led up to His Passion1 and prophecy is a much more restricted privilege than spiritual kingship. 1 Three kingships can be distinguished in Christ: one divine, the second spiritual, the third temporal. The second, the only one in which the Church participates, is the only one to be con­ sidered here. See below, Excursus III, TA? Three Kingihips of Christ. We try to define here the precise reason for the kingship of Christ in so far as it is distinct from His priesthood. 1 cf. St. Thomas, III, q. 7, a. 8. 122 Λ THE POWER OF JURISDICTION 2. Docs the Church in no way share in this priesthood and this kingship of Christ? a. In virtue of His redemptive priesthood Christ is the Saviour of man­ kind. In the days of His mortal life all the graces of salvation, coming from the heart of God, were united in His heart before being shared out, grace by grace, to all men, to strangers of the Gentiles and to those around Him of His own nation. For Christ was to act in two ways: from a distance upon those afar off, and by sensible contact upon those at hand. The normal purpose of His action from afar was to prepare the way for the graces of incorporation, and ultimately to preserve these graces in souls; its excep­ tional purpose, to supply in a certain measure for their absence. But His action by contact was still more admirable: for thereby He gave to men those graces of incorporation which were to conform them to Himself in the most marvellous, the most intimate way, a way of the utmost perfection; types of these are to be found in the grace given to “the disciple whom Jesus loved” when he reclined on His breast, and the grace of Our Lady touched by the Word made flesh. Now comes the great question: was all sensible contact with Our Lord broken on the day of the Ascension? Did action by contact, with all the hitherto unknown privileges that it brought into the world, then disappear, leaving only action from a distance? We have the answer already. When He left the world, Christ, the priest par excellence, left behind Him a visible hierarchy endowed with a sacramental power, which is a ministerial participation of His sacerdotal power, a hierarchy with which the faithful can have sensible contact and which He uses as an instrument to fill their hearts with sacramental graces from heaven; the perfect Christian graces, that are to form the Church which is His Body. b. Similarly, in virtue of His kingship Christ is the Doctor, Teacher, and Master of all men. In the days of His mortal life all the graces of light, coming from the Divinity, were united in His intelligence before being scattered among all men to illumine and enlighten them; whether they lived at the ends of the world or close around Him in His own land. For here also He was to act in two ways: He taught as from a distance only those who were far off, and He taught those around Him by sensible contact. The normal purpose of His teaching from a distance was to prepare minds to receive the full and fully explicit revelation, and, ultimately, to bring it back to their minds; its exceptional purpose was to supply in a certain measure for its absence by indicating the road to salvation. But it was through a teaching imparted by contact that the Gospel was announced to men: “For I say to you, many prophets and just men have desired ... to hear the tilings that you hear and have not heard them ” (Matt. xiii. 17);“ How shall they believe him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they be sent?” (Rom. x. 14-15)· 123 » I I i I THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE Once more then comes the great question: was this contact viva voce, through living speech, to be cut short at the Ascension? Did Christ, after three years of direct preaching, cease thereafter to teach the truth in any outward manner? He gave the answer Himself when He sent the Eleven to the ends of the earth, till the end of time, promising to be with them in the work of teaching all that had been revealed to them, and giving them thereby a jurisdictional power of an altogether special nature, since it is a ministerial participation in His royal power.1 Thus, whereas the end of the sacramental power is to penetrate into the soul and introduce mysterious ontological riches, the end of the jurisdic­ tional power is to influence the soul by proposing divine truths from without, that is to say by teaching, oral or written. 2. THE SACRAMENTAL POWER '‘PURE INSTRUMENT", BUT THE JURISDICTIONAL "SECOND CAUSE" I. Jesus is Priest as none other is priest. There is only one redemptive sacrifice: His own. There is but one fountain of grace: His transpierced heart. As far as the sacerdotal and redemptive power is concerned, the power that obtains and dispenses grace, there is not in all the Church any other head, any other ruler, any other source, any other cause, save only Him? When the time of His visible presence among us was ended, He abandoned no part of this rôle. Nor did He wish to deprive us of His sanctifying contact. He availed Himself of mortal priests through whom He might carry out the acts of the Christian cultus, like an artisan using tools that need constant renewal. But it was He alone, and none other, who, through them, was to bring about the presence among us of the sacrificial intercession of the cross; He alone who, through them, was to baptize and absolve. His sacerdotal and sanctifying action was to pass through them independently of their moral worthiness or unworthiness, and to do so infallibly, for—and this is true above all on the supernatural plane—an instrument does not act by its own proper virtue, but by the virtue of him who uses it. The ministers of the sacraments, their sacerdotal power, and the sacraments themselves, are in fact no more than purely external instruments, mere transmitters of im­ pulsions coming from Christ Himself, which, in souls made ready for them, blossom into graces. The priesthood of Christ is thus participated in the Church only in a purely instrumental manner. 1 Protestantism, whose essential method it is to oppose when it ought to subordinate, cannot help seeing a conflict between the kingly power of Christ and its ministerial participation: “ The Roman Catholic dogma of the infallibility of the Pope jeopardises the kingship of Christ in a way that makes it impossible for me to recognize the Church where this dogma is in force ” (Karl Barth, Credo London 1936, p. 197). ’St. Thomas, III, q. 8, a. 6; q. 64, a. 4» ad 3. 124 THE POWER OF JURISDICTION 2. It is not quite the same with His kingship. We have just said that Jesus is Priest as none other is priest. We must also say that Jesus is King as none other is king. He rules angels and men. God “raised him up from the dead, and set him on his right hand in the heavenly places, above all principality and power, and virtue and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come. And he hath subjected all things under his feet, and hath made him head over all the church, which is his body” (Eph. i. 20-23). He said Himself “All power is given to me in heaven and in earth” (Matt, xxviii. 18). At the Transfigura­ tion a voice from the cloud demanded that He should be obeyed: “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased: hear ye him” (Matt. xvii. 5). He has authority to teach infallibly what is to be believed and what is to be done: “I am the light of the world. He that followeth me walkcth not in darkness” (John viii. 12). He reigns by His own virtue and not by delegation; and His kingdom is the Church, not of one country only but of all, not of one age only but of all, not the Church militant only but also the Church suffering and triumphant. Jesus is the fountain-head of a universal kingship, and He never ceases to exercise it from heaven where He sits at the right hand of the Father. And yet, so that men might not be deprived of the help His living voice had brought them, He has in His mercy left them a visible power, continuing to speak with authority in His name—the power ofjurisdiction. The Father had said: “This is my beloved Son; hear him” (Luke be. 35) ; and Our Lord was to say in His turn: “He that heareth you, heareth me: and he that despiseth you, despiseth me. And he that despiseth me, despiseth him that sent me” (Luke x. 16). His kingship was thus to be participated. But not in quite the same way as His priesthood. To force open the door of the soul and then to pour grace into it, is possible to none but God ; and creatures therefore can here avail only as instruments in His hand, and for ends beyond their scope. But to propose to minds a speculative or practical message from without, even were this message of divine origin, is a work which seems more connatural to men, and one in which they can have a greater share in the initiative. The interior influx of grace, remarks St. Thomas,1 cannot be transmitted save by instruments, and, in this matter, Christ alone can be Head of the Church: as God, evidently; and even as Man in this sense, that He possesses in a perfect way all the graces which, as instrument of the divine omnipotence, He com­ municates to other men. On the contrary, the “exterior government of the Church”, the “authority” over the Church, the “pastoral power” over the Church, the dignity of being a “foundation” of the Church—all that can be communicated to others. They too can be called heads of the Church, though not as Christ is called Head. For Christ is Head and Foundation of the Church in an unique way, in His quality as Principle, or, to put it another way, universally and by His own proper virtue; whereas they are 1 III, q. 8, a. 6; and ad 3. «δ j: ί I i THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE heads and foundations in a dependent and secondary manner­ that is, not universally but only of the Church immersed history, or only for some few years like the Pope, or for some small area like the bishops; and this not by their own virtue but in their quality as ambassadors of Christ For Christ therefore we are ambassadors, God as it were exhorting by t (2 Cor. v. 20). To be Head” of the Church, to be "Shepherd”, to be "Ruler”, belongs primarily to Christ (John x. 11), and then to His Apostles and their successors (Johnxxi. 17; Actsxx. 28; Heb. xiii. 17). To be a “Foundation” of the Church also belongs to Christ (1 Cor. iii. 11) and to His Apostles (Matt XVI xvi. 18; Eph. ii. 20; Apoc. xxi. 14)—but to Christ as having the principal and universal authority, and to the Aposdes as having a secondary and limited authority. These testimonies are perfecdy clear, and no heresy can eliminate them from the Scriptures. Consequcndy, the depositaries of the jurisdiction act as second causes rather than as mere transmitters. They have certain initiatives and certain responsibilities.1 The drawback of giving men such a privilege is that in proportion to the importance of their office their natural fallibility' will threaten to invade the government of the Church. Hence, so that the Church salt of the earth, and not be reabsorbed into the world, it needs the help of a particular providence, a prophetic gift, Christ’s assistance: “Go therefore, teach ye all nations ... 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” (Matt, xxxiii. ig-20). Christ is the Head, the Ruler, the Foundation of the Church as PriestSaviour and as King. As Priest-Saviour He is so to the exclusion of all others, and men are never in this respect anything but instruments, mere transmitters. As King, He is so in participation with others whom in His love He makes His associates. But in Him the tide is primary, universal, permanent; in the others it is derived, restricted and temporary. THE POWER OF JURISDICTION II. DIVISION INTO EXTRAORDINARY OR EXCEP­ TIONAL JURISDICTION AND PERMANENT OR REGULAR JURISDICTION The spiritual kingship in which Our Lord has called His Apostles and their successors to a share, may be called apostolic authority, pastoral power, or power of jurisdiction. In the very first days of the Church it took on, simultaneously, two forms—the one extraordinary, temporary, the other ordinary and permanent. Why was this? i. THE REASON FOR THIS DIVISION 1. Christ, who delivered Himself up for His Church, willed to found her with His own hands. Just as He had Himself directly given her the sacra­ ments that brought her life, so He Himself direcdy set up the fundamental and enduring constitution according to which she would have to rule souls by His authority and lead souls towards Him. There we have the permanent power of jurisdiction. But this Church whose essential parts are the direct work of Christ, had to be launched on the world, to be given a first impulsion, a first momentum, which was to carry her down the ages. Jesus willed that this impulsion should come from the Church herself, to her from her first leaders. The man of genius who founds a science, an art, or a civilisation, imparts to Iris work an impetus that often carries it on for centuries. Christ did not do less for His Church. Those who first had to introduce her to the nations were animated by a spirit strong enough to impart to her the rhythm and orientation she was to retain through the ages. No one can be without wonder at the spell cast over men’s minds by a St. John or a St. Paul. The greatest intelligences have been nourished on them: an Augustine in the days of the Empire, a Thomas Aquinas in the Middle Ages. To-day they shine as brightly as ever, and their minds will shape Christendoms to come. We must recognize that in this sense they were associated with Our Lord in the work of founding His Church. There we have the origin of the extra­ ordinary power of jurisdiction. 2. This distinction between the extraordinary and the permanent juris­ diction is attested by a double fact. On the one hand it seems absolutely certain that the Apostles had privileged powers w'hich were to cease with them: the power, for instance, of communicating new revelations or of writing inspired books. On the other hand it seems absolutely certain that the Aposdes were the first depositaries of a power to teach the nations, a power that was to pass to their successors and to be perpetuated till the end of time.1 Consequently, there are two ways in which the Church is said 1 cf. L. Billot, S.J., De Ecclesia Christi, Rome 1921, vol. I, q. 13, th. 26, p. 546. 127 I I > ! i i. THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE to be apostolic: first because the Apostles, in virtue of their extraordinary powers, founded her and gave her the first impulsion, the first orientation; and next because the Apostles bequeathed her their ordinary powers. But we can restrict the meaning of the word “apostolate” taken substan­ tively1 so as to make it signify exclusively' the extraordinary jurisdictional powers which the Apostles held as founders of the Church.2 From this standpoint, which I adopt here for brevity's sake, “the apostolate” will mean the extraordinary’ jurisdiction alone. As opposed to that, the per­ manent jurisdiction could be called “the pontificate” or “pastorate”.3 It comprises two degrees: the sovereign pontificate or Papacy, and the depen­ dent pontificate or episcopate. The apostolate and the pontificate are therefore distinct in the first place as having different ends, the first being needed for the foundation and the second for the preservation of the Church. They are further distinguished, as we can foresee, by the different form taken by' the assistance, the divine aid, that Our Lord promised His envoys in the world. 2. THE TWO JURISDICTIONS UNITED IN THE APOSTLES I. The pontificate, which is permanent, and the apostolate, which is temporary, were, for a time, united in the same persons. Both, as we shall sec, were directly conferred by Jesus on His Disciples. To Peter, Jesus gave the supreme pontificate, the supreme pastorate, over all the sheep of the fold. From Peter, in whom it resided in its highest form, it would have been normal for the pontificate to descend into the body of the Church in a derived form, that of the episcopate. But God, anticipating on the operation of His own laws, can produce immediately what, in the regular course of things, would come about as a normal consequence ; for instance He might create a tree already laden with fruit. So it was that Christ acted with the Apostles. He conferred on the Aposdes the episcopal power of jurisdiction which, normally, should descend to them from Peter w'hose sheep they were. He conferred the apostolate on the Twelve directly, and not through Peter. “And it came to pass in those days that he went out into a mountain to pray, and he passed the whole night in the prayer of God. And when day was come, he called unto him his disciples ; and he chose twelve of them whom also he named Apostles” (Luke vi. 12-13). Now this aposto1 The adjective “ apostolic ” retains a more extended sense. 1 cf. Cajctan, in the opusculum he wrote on the 12th October 1511, on the eve of the Reforma­ tion: " Apostoli inter sc possunt comparari dupliciter. Primo inquantum aposioli, et sic omnes fuerunt aequales. Alio modo inquantum ozes Christi, ab eo hic corporali conversatione separatae, et sic Petrus solus est pastor, et reliqui apostoli oves sub illius cura ” (De Comparatione Auctoritatis Papae et Concilii, cd. Pollet, Rome 1936, cap. iii, no. 23). So also John of St. Thomas: “ Apostolis esse datam parem auctoritatem quasi extraordinariam et delegatam in ratione apostolatus, non tamen aequalem in ratione ordinariae potestatis ad gubernandam Ecclesiam ” (In 1I-II, q. 1 to 7; disp, x, a. 3, no. 22; vol. VII, p. 187). 3 In the large sense the pastoral power comprises the apostolate and the pontificate. In the restricted sense it signifies the pontificate only. 128 THE POWER OF JURISDICTION late would necessarily carry with it, as soon to be exercised, both the episco­ pal power of jurisdiction and the episcopal power of order. Thus, then, Jesus gave directly to Peter the supreme pontificate or Papacy, and to the other Apostles the dependent pontificate or episcopate. Further­ more, He gave directly to the Twelve the privilege of the apostolate. In the first days of the Church, on the morrow of Pentecost, the permanent jurisdiction existed therefore whole and entire; but it was hidden as it were within the extraordinary jurisdiction; somewhat as a flower, already pre­ formed, remains protected and hidden for a time in the enveloping folds of its calyx. All the Twelve had the apostolate—their untransmissible privilege. Peter had the Papacy besides, and the otheis the episcopate—their transmissible dignity.1 St. John, St. James and St. Paul, for example, considered as Apostles—that is, as having power over the universal Church for its founda­ tion—could not have successors, for the Church could not be founded twice. But considered as bishops, that is as simply possessing the plenitude of the power of order, and, in dependence on Peter, jurisdiction over a particular portion of the Church, they could have successors. Should these successors separate themselves from Peter they might indeed, by sacramental trans­ mission, retain the fullness of the power of order. But they would at once lose the sole jurisdiction the Apostles could communicate—that is to say a jurisdiction to be exercised in dependence on that of Peter—and in this respect it would be of little use to them to occupy a see once founded by the Apostles, or to be, in virtue of mere historical continuity, the Apostles’ successors. 2. No one who grasps this distinction between extraordinary and per­ manent jurisdiction wall have any difficulty in reconciling various passages of Scripture which might otherwise seem contradictory. For example, Scripture represents the mission of the Apostles as extra­ ordinary and temporary, but also as permanent and enduring. It was ex­ traordinary’ because (a) the Apostles could speak, and had to speak, as ocular witnesses to the life and Resurrection of Christ: “Wherefore,” said St. Peter, before the election of Matthias, “of these men 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 up from us, one of these must be made a witness with us of his resurrection” (Acts i. 21-22): it is as “eyewitnesses of his greatness” that Peter and the Apostles made known the power and coming of Our Lord, who “re­ ceived from God the Father honour and glory', this voice coming down to him from the excellent glory: This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. And this voice we heard brought from heaven when we were with him in the ’John XXII, on October 23rd, 1327, condemned the proposition of Marsilius of Padua and of John of Janduno, affirming the equality of all the Apostles, Peter included: “ The Blessed Apostle Peter had no more authority than the other Apostles, and was not their head. Christ left no head for His Church and chose no one for His Vicar ” (Denz. 496). ISO THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE holy mount” (2 Pet. i. 17-18).1 And St. John was to write: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the word of life ... We do bear witness and declare unto you ” (1 John i. 1-2). Again their mission was extraordinary because (A) in Scripture the Twelve are called, along with Christ, the foundations of the Church: “You are . . . built upon the foundation of the Apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ liimself being the chief comer stone” (Eph. ii. 20); “And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb” (Apoc. xxi. 14). .And yet the mission of the Apostles was per­ manent since they had lasting tasks to perform. This is equally true of the Aposdes taken collectively—“Going therefore, teach ye all nations . . . And behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the worjd” (Matt, xxviii. 19-20)—as it is of Peter, chosen from amongst them all to feed Christ’s sheep visibly (John xxi. 17). Once you admit the two-fold jurisdiction of the Aposdes everything becomes clear. Take another example. Scripture represents Peter at once as the superior and as the equal of the other Apostles. Superior, since he had to feed all the sheep of the flock; equal, since Paul at Antioch withstood him to his face (Gal. ii. 11). The foregoing distinction removes the difficulty. Peter was superior to the other Apostles on the plane of the permanent jurisdiction, of the pontificate; he was equal to the other Apostles on the plane of ex­ traordinary jurisdiction, of the apostolatc. St. Thomas Aquinas noted the point with his usual penetration: since it was in public that Paul resisted Peter it was not a case of mere fraternal correction, which can be administered by an inferior to his superior but calls for privacy, and “he would not have done it if he had not been in some respect his equal in the defence of the faith [‘nisi aliquo modo par esset quantum ad fidei defensionem’]”3. Let us moreover note here that if the Twelve were equal as regards the apostolate that would not prevent one of them from having some prerogative peculiar to himself. St. Augustine points out, for example, that Paul received the apostolatc from Christ risen and glorified, but the other Apostles from Christ in His mortal flesh;3 and to signify that, says St. Thomas, Paul is pictured on papal bulls to the right and Peter to the left? III. THE EXTRAORDINARY JURISDICTION OR APOSTOLATE The Apostles arc the basis, the foundation of the Church, first in the sense that they had received from Christ, by whom they had been chosen, the 1 Even supposing that this second Epistle is not by St. Peter (on diis cf. J. Chaîne, Zzs Épüre* calhoh^s, Paris 1939), the text would still show how the inspired author thought of the Apostles. *St. Thomas, 11-11, q. 33, a. 4, ad. 2. * Rftrccl., lib. I, cap. xxiv, 1. ‘ Connnmf. cd Galaltu, cap. i, lect. 1. THE POWER OF JURISDICTION privilege of endowing her with those means of salvation that she would have to employ thenceforth for all time. Here, then, wc shall have to deal with their extraordinary jurisdiction, with the spiritual powers of the apostolate. But the Apostles are foundations of the Church in this still more mysterious sense—that they were gifted by God with a zeal so intense and so infectious that its effects would be felt in the hearts of the faithful down to the end of time, and would put its stamp on all the charity of the Church: and so we shall have to discuss, however briefly, the sanctity of the Aposdes. /. THE SPIRITUAL POWERS OF THE APOSTOLATE The apostolatc carried with it the promulgation of certain sacraments, an exceptional prophetic knowledge of the revelation, an extraordinary power to found particular Churches, and finally the gift of miracles. A. Promulgation of Certain Sacraments The sacraments are the instruments of grace, and the Author of grace alone has the final power to institute them. It is therefore as God that Christ has this radical and incommunicable power over them which St. Thomas calls “potestas auctoritatis”. But even as Man He has a derivative power to institute the sacraments and to found the Church, “potestas excellentiae”.1 He did not communicate it, even to the Apostles; He alone exerted it, instituting all the sacraments Himself.2 The Apostles were sent, not so that each on his own initiative should found a Church according to his own ideas—many different schemes in fact were possible—but simply and solely to complete and spread abroad the Church of their Master. Christ not only kept the institution of the sacraments in His own hands, but Himself promulgated those of them that presented the chief difficulties for faith : Baptism, the Eucharist, Holy Orders, Penance. He even announced them in advance, insisting for example with Nicodemus that Baptism would be a new birth, and with the Jews of Capharnaum that His Flesh would be true meat and His Blood true drink. However, Christ left it to the Apostles to promulgate, thatis. authoritatively to notify and make obligatory the other sacraments. Thus Confirmation is only fully made known to us by the Acts of the Apostles (viii. 17 and xix. 6) ; Extreme Unction by the Epistle of St. James (v. 14); and the dignity of Matrimony by that of St. Paul to the Ephesians (v. 21).3 1 HI, q. 64, a. 4. ... . . ■. 1 Dcnz. 844, 996, 2088. Christ instituted the chief sacraments, such as Baptism and the Eucharist, in detail, ” in individuo He could deal with the rest in a more general way, leaving the Church a certain latitude for the more concrete determination, even modification in the course of time, of such particulars as their matter and their form and so forth. ’St. Thomas, III, q. 64, a. 1, 2, 3; Suppl., q. 29, a. 3. The Council of Trent defines that the sacrament of Extreme Unction was " promulgated by the Apostle St. James ” (Dcnz. 926), and that, as St. Paul indicates, Christ merited by His passion the grace that sanctifies spouses (Denz. 96g). 13* ’ η & THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE B. Exceptional Prophetic Knowledge of of the Substance Revelation I, THE APOSTLES’ KNOWLEDGE GREATER THAN THAT OF PRECEDING AGES The Apostles, who had to institute no other sacraments than those in­ stituted by Christ, had to preach no other faith than that which Christ brought into the world; a faith moreover that was not meant to destroy but to fulfil the revelations made long before to the people of God. But the Apostles penetrated further into the faith that Jesus announced than the ancient patriarchs and prophets had been able to do. “You may understand,” wrote St. Paul to the Ephesians, “my knowledge in the mystery of Christ, which in other generations was not known to the sons of men, as it is now revealed to his holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit . . . To me, the least of all the saints, is given this grace, to preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ: and to enlighten all men, that they may see what is the dispensation of the mystery’ which hath been hidden from eternity in God who created all things” (iii. 4 and 8). That is why the Apostles were charged to reveal new truths which, far from being in any conflict with the ancient faith, would explain and deepen it.1 2. THE APOSTLES’ KNOWLEDGE SUPERIOR TO THAT OF THE CHURCH, PRESENT AND FUTURE I. But is this knowledge of the Apostles, surpassing that of all the genera­ tions of the past, to be offered to anyone in the future? No. Theologians explain that the Apostles knew’ the economy of the law of grace as masters who would have to teach all ages, and that their knowledge would never be surpassed or even equalled. For save in the order of material causation (where the contrary is true), the principles of things are superior to the things them­ selves. Abraham, for example, who received the Promise, well understood the Promise; Moses, who received the Law, well understood the Law; and the Apostles, who received the mystery of Christ, well understood the mystery of Christ. There is an illusion that appeared first in the second century with the Montanists, and reappears periodically in history', which consists in crediting others living after the Apostles with the full and definitive manifes­ tation of the Spirit promised by' Jesus. The Abbot Joachim, who was a Cistercian, thought St. Benedict had it, and Brother Peter John, who was a Franciscan, thought St. Francis had it. The Reformation had other prophets, and modernism also has its own, who proclaim, for instance, that the Christian faith should shake itself free from every sacramental rite and every dogmatic 1 “ Licet prophetis éa quae Deus facturus erat dica salutem humani generis, in generali rele­ vaverit, quaedam tamen specialia apostoli, circa hoc, cognoverunt, quae prophetae non cog­ noverant ” (St. Thomas, I, q. 57, a. 5, ad 3). “ Quaedam explicite cognita sunt a posterioribus, quae a prioribus non cognoscebantur explicite '’ (II—II, q. I, a. 7). I32 è&.i THE POWER OF JURISDICTION formula. The temptation is always and everywhere the same, except that to-day there seems to be a growing number of prophets who each attempt to illustrate out of the Gospel the “message7’ which it is “his mission7’ to preach to the world.1 But, said St. Thomas, all these arc vanities.2 For Christ chose His own Apostles Himself, once and for all. “Then he opened their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures” (Luke xxiv. 45). “I will not now call you servants: for the servant knoweth not what his lord doth. But I have called you friends: because all things whatsoever I have heard of my Father, I have made known to you11 (John xv. 15). He said to them also: “I have yet many things to say to you: but you cannot bear them now. But when he, the Spirit of truth is come, he will teachyou all truth. For he shall not speak of himself; but what things soever he shall hear, he shall speak: and the tilings that are to come he shall show you” (xvi. 12-13)? Then, before the Ascension: “But you shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence” (Acts i. 5). Ten days after the Ascension, while they were in the cenacle, the Holy Spirit came upon them, as He has never since come upon anyone. They were then shown the future—think of what is said in the Apocalypse about the destinies of the Church, in the Epistle to the Romans about the destiny of the Jews. For the most part, however, this did not touch the details of contingent events. Those to whom Jesus had said “Go, teach all nations” could not indeed be unaware that the Gospel was to be proclaimed to the Gentiles, or that after Christ’s death the legal observances were virtually superseded; yet we see Peter hesitate for a moment to receive the first pagans into the Church, or publicly to repudiate the Mosaic observances. 1 cf. “ Le ‘ messianisme ’ de Mickicwicz”, in Éxigaiaschrétiennes en politiyu, Paris 1945, pp. 76 ct seq. 2 I—II, q. 106, a. 4, ad 2. 3Jesus had also said: “ But the Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring all tilings to your mind, whatsoever I shall have said to you ” (John xiv. 26). This text, like those just cited, can be understood in two ways: either (l) as we understand it here, of a teaching of the Spirit communicated to the Apostles as deposit­ aries of the extraordinary jurisdiction—the Spirit will teach them truths which, without new reve­ lations, could not be gathered from the revelation already made by Jesus: or (2) of a teaching of the Spirit communicated to the Apostles as depositaries of the permanent jurisdiction. The Holy Spirit will not then bring new revelations, but infallible assistance in proposing and unfolding, through all future ages, the deposit of Christian revelation which had been integrally entrusted (Dm2. 1836) to the Apostles. On these two possible interpretations, see for instance M.-J. I Jigrange, O.P., Écangile selon Saint Jtan, Paris 1925, pp. 392, 420, 421. The Gospel text seems to me to authorize both interpretations at once, the second not being alien to the first but subordinated to, and in line with it. The assistance of the Holy Spirit to manifest a new revelation entails the assistance of the Holy Spirit to preserve it. And, indeed, this same Spirit was to be with the Apostles “ for ever " (John xiv. 16), which seems to indicate, Lagrange observes, that He will assist “ the collectivity of the disciples”. He is given to the Apostles inasmuch as they had to preach to all nations till the end of the world (Matt, xxviii. 19-20). It would be possible to cite ocher texts bearing several literal meanings subordinated to each other: thus the power of binding and loosing given to Peter and the other Apostles covers several distinct powers linked together in dependence. St. Thomas formulated the principle: “Since the literal sense is that which the author intends, and since the Author of Holy Writ is God, who by one act comprehends all dungs by His intellect, it is not unfitting (as Augustincsays) if, even according to the literal sense, one word in Holy Writ should have several interpretations *’ (I, q. i, a. to). ISS I i I Μ j ; ·. r THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE They could not be ignorant that Christ would keep His Church in being “till the consummation of the world but they knew “neither the times nor the moments which the Father hath put in his own power”—this date not being included amongst the things which the Son of Man could properly announce to the world.1 But the Spirit showed them fully all that con­ cerned the substante of the mysteries of faith.2 They must therefore have known the divine revelation not, as we do, through a multitude of human concepts, but by a divine prophetic light, capable of setting all the truths it contains before their minds at once: an intuitive knowledge, richer and more explicit than that to be enjoyed during the whole life of the future Church.3 2. It was because, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas, they wanted to give their full meaning to the scriptural texts describing the grace of Pente­ cost, and because they judged with St. Thomas that those who st nearer to Christ had the deeper knowledge of the mysteries of the faith,4 that the classical theologians affirm that the Apostles were privileged to embrace in one clear and distinct act of faith all that the Church would ever learn through the progress of dogma. This docs not mean that the Apostles carried in their minds an express and automatically elaborated formulation of all the dogmas to be proposed in succeeding centuries, and that they "kept back” this knowledge from their contemporaries: our higher theology 1 If the Son declares to the Apostles that He knows not the day or hour of the end of the world (Mark xiii. 32), it means that He has no mission to reveal it to them (Acts i. 7). The text of the Acts throws light on that of the Gospel, as Bossuet has well showm in Meditations sur Γ Évangile (the Saviour's last week, 78th day). 3 “ Docuit autem Spiritus sanctus apostolos omnem ttrilaiem de his quae pertinent ad necessitatem salutis, sdlicct de credendis et agendis. Non tamen docuit eos de omnibus futuris eventibus; hoc enim ad eos non pertinebat ” (St. Thomas, I-II, q. 106, a. 4. ad 2). 1 "In their capacity as supreme masters of the plenary and definitive revelation, and foundations of the Church for ever, the Apostles, according to the traditional theology, had the special privilege of receiving, by way of an infused light, an explicit knowledge of divine revelation, a knowledge superior to that enjoyed or to be enjoyed by ah theologians, and indeed the entire Church, till the consummation of the world. All the dogmas which the Church has defined, or will define in the future, were therefore found in the minds of the Apostles, not merely in a mediate, virtual or implicit manner, but immediately, formally, explicitly. Their knowledge of the revealed deposit was not due, like ours, to partial and human concepts containing implicitly or virtually a much wider meaning than they express, and requiring time and labour for the gradual unfolding and explanation of their content. It came from a divine or infused light, a simple supernatural act of understanding actualizing and illuminating at one sole moment the whole virtuality of the revealed idea” (F. Marin-Sola, O.P., L'faolutwn homogène du dogme catholique, 1924, vol. I, p. 57). Here are the chief theses of John of St. Thomas on this subject, with indications of their degree of certitude: (1) it is of faith, on account of Ephesians iii. 4. that the Apostles, doctors of the law of grace and our masters, understood the mysteries of the faith much more perfectly than the prophets and the patriarchs; (2) it is absolutely certain—the contrary, in the common view, would be an “ error concerning the faith—that the Church of to-day believes nothing that was not clearly and distinctly revealed to the Apostles before their death; (3) it is probable, and this is the express thought of St. Thomas, that on the day of Pentecost the Apostles knew, with speculative knowledge, all the truths of salvation to be believed and observed, so that from that moment on nothing new was rescaled to them; (4) if the Apostles had, from the day of Pentecost onward, a perfect speculative knowledge of the mysteries of the faith, that does not imply that henceforth they had full practical knowledge (Π-Π, q. I ; disp. 6, a. 2: voL VII, p. 120 seqq.). • II-II, q. I, a. 7, ad 4. IS! THE POWER OF JURISDICTION hardly inclines us to such strangely mechanical explanations? It means that the Apostles held the whole revealed deposit under the eye of their faith in the super-eminent richness of a global conceptual presentation, received by them in an infused way which they could not possibly transmit to those around them, and which accordingly they had to translate for the benefit of the faithful by a living and progressive effort of conceptualisation and formulation; conditioned, for the rest, by all sorts of historical circumstances.2 This is the sense in which we can say that the starting-point of dogmatic progress lay not in the knowledge of the Apostles themselves but in that of the primitive Church; that it consists “in the written and oral formulas of the Apostles, by giving these formulas not precisely the meaning which the supcrnaturally enlightened understanding of the Apostles would see there explicitly, but the meaning which these formulas express of themselves, understood in the sense of the primitive Church.”3 3. The doctrine that the Apostles had a perfect knowledge of the revela­ tion was one of the first that the Apologists had to defend. To the Gnostics, who were already accusing the Apostles of “mixing legalist ideas with the words of the Saviour”, St. Irenaeus, towards the end of the second century, replied that “it is not allowable to say that the Apostles preached before possessing perfect knowledge [of the economy of salvation] as some have dared to say, who boast of correcting them. For when Our Lord was risen from the dead, when they were invested with the power of the Holy Spirit coming from on high, they were filled with all gifts and received the per­ fection of knowledge; and it was then that they went forth to the ends of the earth spreading the good news of all that God had done for us, and announc­ ing heavenly peace to men. For each and all of them equally possessed the Gospel of God.”1 Hence they were able to deposit, “like a rich man in a bank”, the fullness of truth in the Church? Some years later Tertullian 1 The doctrine that credits the Apostles with a thus explicit knowledge of die whole of the revealed deposit is regarded as extravagant by M. R. Draguet in his article “ L'évolution des dogmes", Encyclofddie Apologétique, Paris 1937, pp. 1179 and 1190. The author of the article does not think it possible that the Apostles should not have proclaimed all that they knew explicitly. However, that very thing was true of Christ, their Master. He appeals to Irenaeus and Tertullian. They, however, say that the Apostles had a perfect knowledge of revelation, that they knew all, and were ignorant of nothing, in Christ’s doctrine. ’ On 2 Cor. xii. 4: “ And I know such a man ... that he was caught up into paradise, and heard secret words, which it is not granted to man to utter ", Pcrc Allo writes: “It means, not that he is forbidden, like the adepts of pagan initiations, to speak of it with uninitiated people such as the Corinthians, but that it was impossible fur any human language or any human concepts to express such mysteries, that such expression is not * permitted ’ him by the exigencies of thought and language in this present life ” (Seconde /pitre aux Corinthiens, Paris i937i P· 3°®)· See also on Apo­ calypse x. 4: “ Seal up the things which the seven thunders have spoken, and write them not ", the same author notes: "John received a command from above to keep back, locked up in his memory, the supernatural revelations he had received but in such a way that he could neither recall nor express them in any satisfying manner. One thinks at once of those unutterable words that Paul heard in his rapture. This powerlessness may itself be felt as a divine command by the prophet” (Apocalypse, Paris 1933, p. 140)· • F. Marin-Sola, O.P., op. cit., vol. I, p. 60. 4 Contra Harreses, lib. Ill, cap. i, no. 1; P.G. vol. VII, col. 8444 ibid., cap. iv, no. 1 ; col. 855. 135 y THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE attacked the same doctrine among the African Gnostics, who taught that the Apostles had not known everything: “What sane man will believe that they were ignorant of anything, these whom Christ had set up as masters, who were His companions, His disciples, His intimates, to whom He privately explained all difficulties, saying that it was given to them to know things hidden from others . . .? True, He said: I have jet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now; but He added : When the Spirit of truth is come, He will leadyou into all truth. And He kept His promise, since the Acts of the Apostles attest the descent of the Holy Spirit.”1 It is true, Tertullian goes on, that it would be no less folly to agree first that the Apostles were ignorant of nothing, and preached nothing that could set them at odds with each other, and to add next that “they did not reveal all they knew to all, but proclaimed some things in public for all, and entrusted others in secret to a few”.1 But if Tertullian declares that the Aposdes revealed all they knew to everybody, it was clearly to rebut the notion of an esoteric doctrine contradicting the common doctrine of the Church, and not to deny that they had a deeper and more explicit knowledge than the faithful of the mysteries they taught them. 3. PROPHETIC KNOWLEDGE NOT EXTINCT IN THE CHURCH The Aposdes’ knowledge of the divine revelation will never be equalled. Yet there will always be prophetic knowledge in the Church. It will con­ tinue to exist, but under subordinate forms. a. The highest and purest of these prophetic lights will be that which the Church, assisted by God, needs in order to grasp, to keep intact, and to explain the meaning of revealed truth which is to be received in obedience and faith. “The privilege of inerrancy or of infallibility guaranteed to the magisterium of the Church cannot be understood in a purely negative or passive sense which would represent God as only intervening just in time to prevent a mishap. The magisterium of the Church proceeds by positive judgments which imply a profound intelligence, an unlimited discernment. Taken simply in themselves, the formulae in which the Church sets the diamond of dogma are wonderful works. How much more precious is the judgment which they contain! This is the lofty form of prophecy which makes the Church a contemplative of the highest order.”3 Thus are com­ municated to us in the course of ages the authentic conceptual data of the 1 Dt Praeicriptione, xxii. 2, 3, 8. To establish the ignorance of the Apostles the heretics naturally brought forward the conflict of Antioch, where Peter was rebuked by Paul (Gal. ii. 11). Tertullian answers first that Paul himself preached no other Gospel titan did the other Apostles, and next that Peter erred in practical conduct, not in doctrine; the Apostles “ criticised as unsuitable for certain limes, persons and circumstances, various practices which they aliensed themselves with due regard to times, persons and circumstances". It is as if Peter should criticise Paul for having circumcised Timothy in spite of his own prohibition of circumcision (ibid., xxiv. 3). * ibid., XXV. 1; xxvii. 1. Ή. Clérissac, O.P., Lt myfthe de PÉglûe, Paris 1918: English translation, The Myitery of the Church, London 1937, p. 69. The Church is already contemplative inasmuch as she infallibly pro­ claims the intellectual meaning of the divine message. But she is contemplative in a still more noble way when she cleaves by a lively faith and the gift of wisdom to the deep content of this message. In the first case we have a prophetic grace; in the second a sanctifying grace. THE POWER OF JURISDICTION Christian faith. “ For our faith rests upon the revelation made to the Apostles and the prophets who wrote the canonical books, but not on revelations eventually made to other Doctors.”1 b. The Church not only knows the revealed deposit; she is also enlightened on the state of the world and the movement of minds. The most richly endowed of her children share her miraculous penetration. The divine light enables them to discern the fundamental tendencies of their times; they know how to diagnose the real evils, and prescribe the proper remedies. When the masses seem to be struck blind, and even the better sort hesitate or fumble, they go straight to the point with supernatural instinct. Time merely shows how just their vision was. St. Athanasius or St. Cyril, St. Augustine or St. Benedict, Gregory VII, Francis of Assisi, Dominic—these saw, as with prophetical insight, the tendency of their times and the orientation that had to be given to souls. The author of the City of God, the contemplative who eight hundred years ago founded the rule of the Carthusians, St. Thomas who three centuries before the Reformation elucidated the truths that were to be most vigorously contested on the threshold of the new era, Joan of Arc, Teresa of Avila—there you have the true prophets of the Church. They were also saints, though prophecy is distinct, even perhaps separable, from sanctity. But it always occurs, when authentic, in the wake of the apostolic revelation ; and as the power of the master sustains and guides the effort of the disciples, authentic prophecies are sustained and guided by the revelation of Christ and His Apostles. “No epoch,” says St. Thomas, “has lacked men endowed with the spirit of prophecy, not indeed to introduce some new doctrine of the faith [ad novam doclrinam fidei depromendam], but to direct human acts [ad humanorum actuum directionem]."2 Those prophets who deviate from this course arc false prophets.3 1 St. Thomas, I, q. i, a. 8, ad 2. “ Super revelatione facta apostolis de fide Unitatis et Trinitatis, fundatur tota fides Ecclesiae” (II-II, q. 174, a. 6). Those Doctors who work at bringing into clearer light the riches contained in the revealed deposit might well have to be aided by special illuminations. In connection with the conversion narrative which opens the De Trinitate of St. Hilary, E. Mersch writes: “ . . . We shall see that . . . Providence seems more than once to have made use of visions and inner experiences, not indeed to teach men any new doctrine concerning the life of Christ in the soul but in order to aid them in understanding what the scriptures have said upon this subject ” (The Whole Christ, p. 291). 1 “ The ancient prophets, ” writes St. Thomas, “ were sent to establish the faith and to amend morals . . . To-day the faith is already established, since the promises have been fulfilled in Christ. But prophecy’ that aims at amendment of morals has not ceased, nor will it ever cease ” (Comm. in λ fall., cap. xi). He explains elsewhere that the prophecies that dealt with the deposit of divinefaith were varied by becoming more explicit with the passage of time, while those dealing with human conduit had to be varied according to circumstances, for the people began to go astray when prophecy ceased: “ And that is w’hy in every age men have been divinely instructed about what should be done, as the salvation of the elect might require ” (II-II, q. 174, a. 6). The passage quoted in our text refers to St. Matthew xi. 13: “ For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John.” On which St. Thomas writes: “ The line of prophets who predicted the coming of Christ could go no further than John who pointed to Christ Himself with his finger. But, as St. Jerome notes, these words do not mean that after John the Baptist there would be no more prophets, since we read in the Acts of the Apostles that Agabus and the four daughters of Philip prophesied. St. John the Evangelist even wrote a prophetic book on the end of the Church. And no times have lacked those endowed with the spirit of prophecy, not indeed to introduce any new doctrine offaith, but to direct IS? i THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE 4. THE WORD OF GOD M.ŸDE KNOWN IN TWO WAYS: BY PURE PROPHECY AND BY TEACHING Christian truth, the word of God, conies to man in two ways: by that of pure prophecy, of interior light, as God spoke to the prophets of old and to the Apostles: “The Spirit of truth will teach you all truth . . . and the things that are to come he shall show you ” (John xvi. 13) ; and by that of teaching or witness: “You shall be witnesses unto me in Jerusalem and in all Judaea and Samaria and even to the uttermost parts of the earth” (Acts i. 8); "Going therefore teach all nations” (Matt, xxviii. 19); “He that heareth you, heareth me” (Luke x. 16)? men’s conduct ” (ibid., ad 3). To these prophecies of general utility* we must add those with some particular aim such as the enlightenment of an individual soul. The Thomist theologians remain faithful to these indications of St. Thomas. Summing up the doctrine of the Salman licenses on the point Père Congar writes: “ The private revelations that God grants in the Church do not bear on speculative truths not already contained in the common revelation made to the Prophets and Apostles; they concern practice, understood however in a very broad sense, into which would enter not only the decisions to be taken or answers to be given, or again the line of conduct to be followed in religious foundations, but the right ordering of worship and the soul’s attitude towards God. This conviction that the rczclaticnu quae mods in Ecclesia fiunt are of a practical character and introduce no new aedtrds is characteristic of the Thomists in this matter. For them, the revelation of die mystery of God is closed: God intervenes indeed in the life of souls, but it is either to direct their individual or social action or to make them penetrate His mysteries in the way that best favours the life of Charity” (“ La crédibilité des révélations privées ”, in lîr spirituelle, 1st October, 1937, (34]). Suarez on the contrary enters on a path that would lead one to admit that private revela­ tions can provide theology not only with “ probable ” dan, but even with “ certain ” principles (ibi I THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE E. The Gift of Miracles Finally, all unknown as they were to the peoples to whom they proclaimed a Church without a past, a folly to the Gentiles, a scandal to the Jews, the Apostles were sorely in need of signs to accredit their mission. The most effective, the one to which they always appealed, was the Resurrection of Our Lord. It guaranteed the truth of the discourses of Peter at Jerusalem (Acts ii. 32), of Paul at Antioch of Pisidia (xiii. 30), at Athens (xvii. 31), and at Corinth (1 Cor. xv). But, “in the name of Jesus of Nazareth”, it was given to themselves also to make the “eloquence of God” (Augustine’s phrase) heard in miracles; they too were to straighten the limbs of the lame (Acts iii. 6), heal the sick, cast out devils (v. 12); they too handled serpents (xxviii. 3), and spoke with tongues (ii. 6). All this had been promised them by Jesus: “And these signs shall follow them that believe : in my name they shall cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues. They shall take up serpents, and if they shall drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay their hands upon the sick, and they shall recover” (Mark xvi. 17-18). The power to work miracles—which does not constitute sanctity, but sometimes indicates it—will always, like the gift of prophecy, be found in the Church of God; but in those days it was bestowed freely. Why? St. Gregory the Great’s commentary on the words of St. Mark puts it admirably: “You, my brethren, who do not perform these miracles, do you therefore disbelieve them? By no means; for we know that they were needed in the early days of the Church. They were needed that the faith might grow. When we transplant our bushes we give them water for just so long as they seem to need it in order to take root in the earth ; and when they arc rooted we stop watering them. Hence St. Paul’s word [1 Cor. xiv. 22]: wherefore longues are for a sign, not to believers, but to unbelievers.”1 Such were the privileges of the Apostles. They knew the whole plenitude of the faith distinctly in one intuitive glance. They proclaimed new revealed truths. In so doing, whether by word of mouth or in writing, they were divinely assisted. They could thus augment the treasure of Tradition and of Holy Scripture. They founded the Church wherever they went, whether free or in chains. They confirmed everything with miracles. practical measure is seen to be disastrous and calculated to trouble the faith of the simple. In my Primauté dt Pierre dans la perspective pratestante et dans la perspecti:? catholiquey Paris, 1953, pp. 70-83, I have developed this viewpoint further in the course of establishing that Peter received from Christ (as pastor of all Christ's sheep, the Apostles included) (t) A truly transapostolic privilege: (2) of the jurisdictional order, which was (3) meant for the founding of the Church, not episodically, M in thç case of a workman who lays foundations, but continuously, as in the case of the rock on which the weight of a building rests, and is, in consequence, (4) enduring. 1 HamiL in Evang.t lib. II, homil. 29·, P»L. LXXVI, col. 1215. THE POWER OF JURISDICTION 2. THE SANCTITY OF THE APOSTLES In the domain of sanctity, too, the Apostles had to be efficient causes, sources; hence their eminent sanctity. A. The Apostles, Principle Charity of the of the Church I. THE CONTAGION OF THEIR CHARITY Besides the jurisdictional power there are powers of love, and to the bare proposition put out by authority may be added the divine persuasion of charity. Now if the whole order of jurisdiction subserves the order of charity, the princes of jurisdiction should also be princes of love; those who first announce divine things should know how to incline men’s hearts to love these things, should have the eloquence of charity and this “voice of the heart, which alone goes to hearts”. “Simon, son of John, lovest thou me more than these?”—“Yes, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee.”—“Feed my sheep” (John xxi. 15). The great wind and the fire that came down on the Apostles on the day of Pentecost marked the influx of the burning and conquering charity which would go kindling on from age to age to the end of historical time1—a mysterious and still too little understood causality of grace, acting by contact like a flame that leaps from branch to branch, a causality found eminently in the Apostles but belonging to the Church—not indeed to the Church teaching as such, not to the hierarchy as such, but to the Church believing and loving in her entirety—and issuing from all that is most precious in her, all that is most interior, and most essential. 2. THE EXCELLENCE OF THEIR CHARITY God, says St. Thomas, “offers to each a grace proportioned to the mission for which he is chosen. The Christ-Man received the most excellent of graces, for his nature would be united to a divine Person. After Him the blessed Mary had the highest plenitude of grace, since she was to be the mother of Christ”. Next we must place St. Joseph, to whom, says Leo XIII, “God entrusted the divine house that contained the first-fruits of the nascent Church”,2 and St. John the Baptist.3 “Amongst the other saints, ” St. Thomas goes on, “the Apostles had the highest dignity, that namely of 1 “ Although they had the Holy Spirit who brought them the grace proper to their own persons, the disciples received the Holy Spirit once more on the day of Pentecost, bringing them grace for all that concerned the promulgation of die faith and the salvation of others *’ (St. Thomas, IV Sent., dist. 7, q. I, a. 2, quaest. 2). 2 Encyclical Quamquam Pluries, 15th August, 1889. a “ Were the Apostles greater than John? In merit, no. But for the sake of the New Testament they proclaimed, yes [non merito, sed ojjicio Novi Testamenti}. In this sense it is said (Matt. xi. 11) that the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he ” (St. Thomas, Comm, in Λfait., Ill, 11). John is inferior to the least in the kingdom, not absolutely, universali1er, but because of the times in which he lived, tempore (ibid., xi. u). ’49 ?»> THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE receiving the things of salvation immediately from Christ, so that in a way the Church was founded on them, as it says in the Apocalypse, xxi. 14: And the wall of the city had twelve foundations and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. Also it is said in 1 Corinthians xii. 28: God has given us different positions in the Church, Apostles first ...” The Apostles ‘‘surpassed all the saints—whatever prerogative these others had, virginity, doctrine, martyr­ dom—for they received the Holy Spirit more copiously”. Others perhaps underwent greater sufferings and practised greater austerities, but the /XposLlcs did their work with the greater charity “and they were ready to undertake, if need be, still greater things ”? Raised to a singular dignity, they had known a superabundant grace, “whence appears the temerity, not to say error, of those who dare to compare the other saints with the Apostles, in anything that concerns grace and glory”.s They could say, with St. Paul: “Be ye followers of me, as I also am of Christ” (1 Cor. xi. 1). 3. THEIR POWER TO JUDGE THE WORLD “Amen I say to you, that you, who have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of Man shall sit on the seat of his majesty, you also shall sit on twelve seats judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matt. xix. 28). It may be that the immediate meaning of the “regeneration” was the era of the New Testament, which was to be put under the authority of the Apostles.1 But it also designates the kingdom of eternal glory: “Know you not that the saints shall judge this world?” wrote St. Paul to the Corinthians. “Know you not that we shall judge angels?” (1 Cor. vi. 3). Not the Apostles only in virtue of their hierarchic privileges, but all the saints with them, the entire Church of love, will “participate in the royal and judicial power of her head”, and her judgment will fall on the whole world and even on the angels, for the praise of those who remained faithful and the condemnation of those who rebelled? But the Apostles excelled in this Church of love. They were the “first fruits of them that believe”? A power of judgment is therefore reserved for them. The final judgment, says St. Thomas, could be carried out in three ways. First by “comparison”: and in this sense the good will judge the wicked, the saints the world; further, the good will be judged by the better, the worst by the bad. Then, next, by “approbation” of Christ’s sentence, and only the just will be allowed to judge thus. Finally by “promulgation” of this sentence, and this will be the privilege of the Apostles, and of those who, following them, shall have despised the world for the sake of spiritual things, since the spiritual man judges all things. This “promulgation” will be “spiritual, not verbal; an illumination, making known to lesser saints and to sinners themselves the rewards and punishments reserved for them, just 1 Comm. in Ram., VIII, 23, lect. 5. 1 Comm. ad Ephes., I, 8, lect. 3. ’ NL-J. Lagrange, O.P., Écangile selon saini Matthieu, Paria 1923, p. 381. 4 E.-B. Allo, O.P., Première épitre aux Ccrinihiens, Paris 1935, p. 134. * St. Cyril of Alexandria, Glapfyr. in Genes., lib. VII; P.G., LXIX, col. 361. ISO s THE POWER OF JURISDICTION as men are now illumined by the angels, and the lower angels by the higher.”1 It will be a mental judgment, as St. Thomas says elsewhere, in which the divine virtue will remind each of what he has done; and if this illumination is of the same order as the illumination of the angels by God, and of men by the angels, “it is not surprising that men will then receive something of the light that will fill the Apostles.” Christ will then give judgment as Author of the New Law, and the Apostles as its promulgators.2 4. THEIR INTERCESSION Finally, the Apostles who, in the days of their mortality, gave the Church a momentum of love that would carry her through time and into eternity, and who at the last day will judge her in the clear light of their love, will not cease to protect her by their intercession in heaven. The Church is well aware of it, for she sings in the Preface of the Apostles: “It is truly meet, and just, right and profitable humbly to beseech Thee, O Lord, eternal Pastor, not to forsake Thy flock but ever to guard it and keep it through Thy holy Apostles, so that by these rulers it may be governed whom Thou didst set over it to be its pastors.” B. Marks of the Charity of the Apostles “But yet rejoice not in this, that spirits are subject unto you: but rejoice in this, that your names are written in heaven” (Luke x. 20). It was fitting, says St. Thomas, that the Apostles should, at the moment of Pente­ cost, be confirmed in grace, “for they were to be the foundation and basis of the whole ecclesiastical edifice, and so they had to be firm”. In Christ, confirmation in grace excluded even the intrinsic possibility of sin. Not so in the Apostles; but grace became potent enough in them to hold their lower appetites in check, to incline their wills powerfully towards God, and to fasten their minds on contemplation of divine truth, so that on this account alone it was almost impossible for them to sin gravely. Divine providence furthermore saw to it that they were externally prevented from succumbing to temptation.3 Nevertheless, even so, the Apostles sinned venially. At Antioch it was Peter, the most favoured of them all, who wavered, and Paul had to resist him: “Once they had received the grace of the Holy Spirit the Apostles no longer sinned mortally, and this was due to the divine power that had confirmed them; they sinned however venially, and that was due to human frailty.”1 This is also St. Augustine’s doctrine: “Who more holy among the new people than the Apostles? And yet the Lord would have them pray : forgive us our trespasses. And again he writes: “When Christ was risen, He confirmed i. 1 Comm, in t Cor., VI, 3. ’ De Veritate, q. 24, a. 9. ’Comm, in Mall., XIX, 28. 4 Comm, ad Gal., II, 11, lect. 3. 4 Contra Duos Epist. Pelag., lib. Ill, cap. vi, no. 15. ISI THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE the Apostles and they became spiritual. Were they therefore without sin? These spiritual Apostles wrote spiritual epistles and sent them to the churches. You think that they did not sin? I do not think so, and I put it to them thus. Say, holy Apostles, when Christ was risen and you were con­ firmed by the Spirit sent from heaven, did you know sin no more? Say, I beseech you. And for us, wc listen, so that sinners may not despair, nor be discouraged from prayer under pretext that they are no longer without sin. Say then! One of them replies. Who is it? He whom the Lord loved the most, who reclined on the Lord’s breast and drank the secret of the kingdom of heaven that he might proclaim it. He it is that I ask: /Xrt thou without sin, or not? He answers and says: if we say that wc are without sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”1 But how mysterious is this persistent proncness to fall away, this incurable wound in the hearts of those even who had been through the unforgettable experiences of Easter and Pentecost! It will have to be said that nothing and no one in this world has ever been without stain, save only the Mother ofJesus, save only the heart of Jesus, placed by the Eucharist in the midst of all our sins. 2. “It is not reason that we should leave the word of God and serve tables. Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven men of good reputation, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business. But wc will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word ” (Acts vi. 2-4). The Apostles therefore knew the highest form of the active life, that which Jesus had chosen, the life that would later be called the apostolic life, a life that, flowing from the fullness of contem­ plation, is higher even than contemplation pure and simple; for “if it is belter to illuminate than simply to shine, it is better to hand on to others the truth contemplated than solely and only to contemplate.”2 3. Finally, they were to give proof of the height of love and seal their mission by martyrdom. “These arc they,” say’s the liturgy, ‘Who in their living flesh planted the Church in their own blood; they drank the chalice of the Lord, they are become the friends of God; their message has been spread abroad in the world, their words have gone forth to the ends of the earth.” In a penetrating study Erik Peterson has brought out the relations between the apostolate and martyrdom as understood in the mind of the Church.3 The notion of apostle comes first, that of martyrdom immediately after. But in the Twelve the two ideas are closely united. This is not accidental: it is providentially willed. Christ Himself, God made Martyr, proclaims it: “I send you out to be like sheep among wolves . . . they will hand you over to courts of judgment, and scourge you in their synagogues; yes, and you will be brought before governors and kings on my account, so that you can bear 1 Srrmo CXXXV, cap vii, no. 8. 1 St. Thomas, II-II, q. i88, a. 6. ’ Erik Peterson, Dcr Martyrcr tmd du Kirdu, Hochland 1936-7, p. 385. THE POWER OF JURISDICTION witness before them, and before the Gentiles ... A disciple is no better than his master, a servant than his lord” (Matt. x. 17-18, 24). The wolves are, first the Jews, whose sanhedrins and synagogues are mentioned; also the Roman governors and the kings, that is to say the Gentiles: in short, they arc all who persecute the Church, that God may have mercy on them all. The conflict between the sheep and the wolves, between the Apostles and the world, is due to no passing misunderstanding; it is ineluctable, and to say that the entire Church is essentially apostolic is to say that the entire Church is essentially crucified, martyred. We have noted that the extraordinary jurisdiction of the apostolate and the permanent jurisdiction of the pontificate were united in the Twelve. Only the permanent jurisdiction passed to their successors. It is not neces­ sarily bound up with martyrdom. However, the grace of martyrdom is never lacking in the Church. We must steer clear of two contradictory errors, says Erik Peterson: that which would recognize none but martyrs as authentic successors of the Apostles, and that which holds that martyrdom, the cross, asceticism, arc no longer needed by the Church. Jurisdiction and the grace of martyrdom, which were united in the Twelve, can be separated among other Christians. But the Church gathers them up together and holds them in close association in the mystery of her profound collective unity. EXCURSUS 1Π THE THREE KINGSHIPS OF CHRIST The traditional doctrine of the Kingship of Christ, its authority fortified by the Encyclical on Christ the King (11 December 1925), throw's a strong light on the source of the jurisdiction of the Church, and ought on this account to be incor­ porated in the treatise De Ecclesia to aid the systematization of ecclcsiological doctrine. I shall try' to show here—with the help of two studies, one of which very clearly sums up the views of theologians prior to the Encyclical (M.-B. Lavaud, O.P., ‘‘La Royauté temporelle de Jésus-Christ sur l’univers ”, in Vie spirituelle, March 1926), and the other assigning the proximate bases of the tem­ poral kingship of Christ (Ch.-\7. Héris, O.P., ‘‘La Royauté sacerdotal du Christ”, in Zz Mystère du Christ, ch. v)—that it is important to distinguish three kingships in Christ: His “divine” kingship, His “spiritual” kingship, and His “temporal” kingship. Only one of these three, the spiritual kingship, has been imparted in a certain measure to the Church. i : The Divine Kingship. We can consider Christ as God. And thus He is King and Lord, both of the universe of supernatural realities and of the universe of natural and temporal things. 2: The Spiritual Kingship. We can consider Christ as Man, charged with the task of imparting spiritual life to the world. Capital grace, which filled His heart, made Him King at once over the whole supernatural order, with a mission to lay down the speculative truths to be believed and the practical things to be done. It is a moving thought, as the Encyclical observes, following St. Thomas (III, q. 59, a. 3), that the supremacy over mankind that Christ received from 153 **-*-·.—·_ THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE the very outset, He nevertheless desired to merit by His Blood. This kingship is altogether spiritual, altogether supernatural. It touches spiritual things alone, but there are two levels of things thus subjected to Christ’s spiritual kingship. The first arc spiritual always and by their very' nature—such as all that is essentially ordered to salvation, truths to believe or put into practice, supreme sanctions and so forth: “He that believe th and is baptized shall be saved; but he that bclieveth not shall be condemned’’ (Mark xvi. 16) ; “If you love me, keep my commandments” (John xiv. 15); “Then shall the king say' to them that shall be on his right hand: Come, ye blessed of my Father, possess you the king­ dom prepared for you from the foundation of the world . . . Then he shall say to them also that shall be on his left hand: Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matt. xxv. 34 and 41). IjH The second become spiritual temporarily and by accident'. “The spiritual kingship of Christ”, says Hcris, on this subject, “involves this power of intervention in human affairs: and in fact in the Gospel we may see Christ making use of it when, for example, He turns the money-changers out of the Temple, and vindicates God’s right to be duly honoured even at the expense of commercial liberties. It is not without interest to remark that this power of intervention in the temporal order does not give Christ any new royal dignity, but is part of His spiritual kingship. For there is no question here of commanding and legislating with a view’ to the natural common good of human society—all that belongs to the temporal power properly so-called.” It is a case of intervention in matters which, although normally temporal, become spiritual in particular cases, because of the way in which they affect the salvation of souls. In this jurisdiction over temporal things in so far as they are accidentally ordered to the spiritual, we shall recognize what the theologians of the Renaissance called (in a phrase which must be properly understood) the indirect power over the temporal. 3: Temporal Kingship. We may lastly consider Christ as Man, abstracting for the moment from the habitual grace He came to give. Then He would not be formally and actually the King of grace. But the infused natural knowledge which already filled His intelligence would enable Him to rule the natural world. Radically, by reason of His union with God, and proximately on account of His infused natural knowledge, Christ therefore possesses as of right the temporal kingship of the whole universe. He is “the prince of the kings of the earth” (Apoc. i. 5), the “ King of kings and Lord of lords” (Apoc. xix. 16). This universal and transcendent suzerainty is not incompatible with the particular power of earthly kings, but contains and envelops it. Whence it follows that Christ could have assumed the temporal government of the whole world without doing any injustice to its kings. His power implies the right to depose princes for merely temporal reasons and to transfer their crowns to others. We must likewise say that Christ, besides His temporal kingship, had a right of property in the whole universe. And thus, at need, we can explain how He could take over certain articles of private property, for example the she-ass and the colt He used for His entry into Jerusalem; that He could allow the Apostles to pluck the cars of com in the fields, that He could curse and destroy the barren fig-tree, that He could send the devils into the swine so that they rushed into the sea and were drowned. It is however preferable to explain all this by His spiritual kingship. THE POWER OF JURISDICTION For Jesus, who was temporal Lord of the universe in right, never wished to be so in fact. He did not make use of His power. He left all the kings on their thrones, as the Church sings in the Epiphany hymn: “He took not away the perishable kingdoms, who gave heavenly kingdoms.’’ St. Augustine remarked that in saying: “My kingdom is not of this world ”, Christ was saying to all earthly kings: “Fear not, I meddle not with your dominion.’’ He did not deny that He was King, even over the temporal, but only that He was so in the manner of earthly kings. His kingship is not particular, but universal; it does not exclude other kingdoms, but permits them; it is not exercised in splendour and display, but hides behind a poor and humble exterior. “Now Christ, although established King by God, did not wish while living on earth to govern temporally an earthly kingdom ... in like fashion He did not wish to exercise judiciary power over temporal concerns, since He came to raise men to divine things” (St. Thomas, III, q. 59, a. 4 ad i). In the same way, although in right He owned all things in the whole universe, He wished to have no more than the mere use of just a few. From being rich, He made Himself poor. He said of Himself: “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air nests; but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head” (Matt. viii. 20). The reason for this renunciation was that Jesus did not come to use His rights, but to establish by the cross a spiritual kingdom, a crucified kingdom, in which poverty, tears and humiliation would be blessed. The Encyclical sums up the doctrine of the temporal dominion of Jesus in a few lines: “We cannot without grave error refuse to Christ as Man the sovereignty over all temporal things. For He received from His Father a right so com­ prehensive over creatures that all are placed under His dependence. But while He lived on this earth He wholly abstained from the exercise of any such dominion, and although He has authorised and still authorises the possession and admin­ istration of temporal goods, He Himself disdained them. Hence the beautiful line: He takes not away the perishable kingdoms, who gives us the heavenly kingdom." Of the three kingships ofJesus it goes without saying that the first, the “divine” kingship, is incommunicable. The third, the “temporal” which Christ possessed without desiring to use it, was no part of the treasure that He left to His disciples. The second alone, the spiritual kingship, concerned with things that are spiritual cither by nature or accidentally, has passed to the Church—in a measure that remains to be precisely stated. All the accusations of theoretical imperialism made against the Roman Church by the dissident Graeco-Russians or by Protestants can be rebutted by this doctrine. Here I have tried to define the precise reason for the kingship of Christ, in so far as it is distinct from His priesthood. But evidently the Feast of Christ the King can be given a more extended sense. For example, we could oppose the reign of love (the Kingdom of God) to the reign of justice, which punishes; we could distinguish the Kingdom of Innocence from the crucified Kingdom of Redemption; and we could describe the prepara­ tion, the foundation, and the destinies of this crucified Kingdom. All that is suggested in the liturgy of the Feast of Christ the King. Chapter V THE PERMANENT JURISDICTION OR PONTIFICATE Christ employs the power of order to make contact with His Church and to pour into her in secret the plenitude of redemptive grace. He employs the power of jurisdiction, the pastoral power, to put before her, always from without, always by way of sensible contact, the whole fullness of the truth, speculative and practical, that is to guide her through time to eternal beatitude.1 To the Apostles He gave first an extraordinary jurisdiction (apostolate) which would die with them, and which they would need for the founding of the Church, then in process of becoming rather than in actual being. And He gave them, linked with the power of order, and, like the latter, transmissible, an ordinary jurisdiction (pontificate) which they were to pass on to their successors.2 I. THE CHIEF DIVISIONS OF THE JURISDICTIONAL POWER A power is a potency endowed with pre-eminence and with authority to act.2 It is defined more especially by its end. The generic end of the 1 .According to the CaUchism of the Cotmcil of Trent the “ ecclesiastical power is two-fold : power of order and power of juruJichcn. The power of order is concerned with the true body of Christ in the Holy Eucharist. The power of jurisdiction is wholly concerned with the mystical body of Christ; and its end is to govern and direct the Christian people, and to lead them to eternal and heavenly beatitude ” (part II, cap. vi). The power of order “ does not cover only the virtue and power of consecrating the Eucharist; it prepares souls for it, makes them ready to receive it, and includes everything that in any way relates to the Eucharist " (cap. vii). The pow er of jurisdiction enables the bishops to “ rule not only the other ministers of the Church but also the faithful, and requires them to witch over the salvation of all with the greatest care and vigilance **; it has its fullest scope in the Reman Pontiff, who, by divine right, is “ father and ruler of all the faithful, and all the bishops and dignitaries w’hatsoever their duties and powers ”, and who ° presides over the universal Church as the successor of Peter, as the true and legitimate Vicar of Christ our Lord " (caps, xxvi and xxviii). 1 ‘ 'Πιο privileges constituting the extraordinary authority possessed by the Apostles as founders of the Church, and thus related to the Church in becoming, were net needed in their successors, who had not the duty of founding the Church . . . The other power, that of ruling and governing the Church, concerns the conscrratitm of the Church, and rests on the power of order given to the Apostles. This power had to pass to their successors and to remain in the Church ” (John of St. Thomas, 11-11, q. 1-7; disp. 1, a. 3, nos. 12-13; vol. VII, p. 181). 5 The ancients distinguished [cira pouvoir, potestas) from potency (puissance, potentia). St. Thomas writes: “ Power properly designates an active potency with a certain pre-eminence ” (IV Sent. dist. 24, q. I, a. I, quaest. 2, ad 3). So also Francis of Vittoria: “ The word power has not THE PERMANENT JURISDICTION power of spiritual jurisdiction is authoritatively to propose to men what is needed to bring them to eternal beatitude. The task is very complex and its fulfilment demands a variety of different measures. One same power may be competent to command acts widely distinct from each other, provided only that these acts conspire together directly to the same end, or—as St. Thomas says, and it comes to the same thing—provided that these acts arc immediately ordered to one another, the first being causes of the second: as fire, for instance, brought near a metal, first heats, then expands, and then melts it.1 Thus in the heart of one same generic power we have been able to recognize two great jurisdictions conferred by Christ on the Apostles: the one, extraordinary, directed to the foundation of a Church which is to last till the end of time; the other ordinary, directed to its conservation. The ordinary jurisdiction itself, setting aside the secondary divisions to which it gives rise and to which canonists are obliged to have recourse, and studying only its essential function which is unceasingly to conserve and form the Church in the world, can be distinguished in several ways. Four major divisions may, I think, be proposed. h J·· Η i. THE FOUR CHIEF DIVISIONS OF THE PERMANENT JURISDICTION I. The first is “formal”. It is concerned with the form or the rôle of the jurisdictional mediation. We sec from this standpoint that the jurisdictional power, the power to “state the law”, may intervene in two ways: a. as at bottom a mere condition sine qua non to declare, recall or explain the higher decisions of the divine law; and b. as a true intermediary cause, itself pro­ mulgating the decisions of ecclesiastical law, and thus giving Christian society its external organization. I shall name them for short the declaratory power2 and the canonical or legislative power, taking this last word in its broadest sense.3 We shall see that the canonical or legislative power, which is altogether the same meaning as the word potency. Matter, the senses, the intelligence, the will, are potencies, not powers. On the other hand, the magistracy, the priesthood, all governments are powers rather than potencies. As St. Thomas explains, power adds to potency the notion of pre­ eminence, of authority ” {Refectiones Theologicae, De Potestate Ecclesiae, cd. P. Getino, Madrid 1934, P· 7)· 1 “ Ad duo, quorum unum est causa alterius, una potestas ordinatur; sicut in igne calor ad calefaciendum et dissolvendum ” {Suppi., q. 17, a. 2, ad 1). 3 Revealed doctrine, says the Vatican Council, “ has been entrusted to the Spouse of Christ, to be faithfully guarded and infallibly declared" (Denz. 1800). 3 The Roman Pontiff, says the Vatican Council once more, “ possesses the plenary and supreme power of jurisdiction over the universal Church, not only as regards matters of faith and morals, but also as regards the discipline and government of the Church throughout the world"' (Denz. 1831). This power can legislate not only in matters of discipline, but also, as Pius IX said, in matters of doctrine (Denz. 8684). That is why I prefer to call it legislative rather than disci pl inary. It covers not only laws strictly so-called but also all measures of ecclesiastical polity. The power we call “ canonical " or “ legislative ” corresponds to the u power of jurisdiction ” as defined by those theologians who, following Billot, do not consider the infallible magisterium as a “jurisdictional power provided we add that this power gives laws not only in disciplinary matters, but also in doctrinal or magis­ terial. It covers all that St. Thomas {IVSent., dist. 19, q. t, a. 1, quaest. 3; cf. Suppl., q. ig, a. 3) calls, with precision, the power ofjurisdiction in the canonical forum. He then opposes it to the power IS? ί ί'ί ]Η . THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE subordinate to the declaratory' power, subdivides in its turn in several ways. 2. The second division is ‘'material”. It is concerned with the material character of the measures prescribed by the jurisdictional power. a. From this point of view we may divide the jurisdictional power accord­ ing as it proclaims speculative truths to be held, or practical truths to be acted on. We shall therefore distinguish the authority to propose speculative truth and the authority to propose practical truth. I must emphasise once more that these are not, properly' speaking, two distinct authorities, two distinct powers, but one and the same power, bearing on propositions to be received with the same obedience whether they be speculative or practical in tenor.1 Nevertheless, this division, although it is simply material, will enable us to define several points concerning the constitution and formation of the message of the Church. b. This division might be replaced by another, somewhat different. Instead of distinguishing jurisdictional decisions as “speculative” and practi­ cal, we might distinguish them as “doctrinal” and practical, using the word “practical” differently. In this sense “doctrine” covers speculative truths and practical truths (as defined above)—they are practical as ordered to action, but doctrinal (that is, speculative) by their tenor, which is general or universal; it sets out what is to be interiorly accepted both for belief and action, and includes both faith and morals.s Over against that the practical will then principally concern the exterior performance of acts demanded by life in common. Thus we shall be led to distinguish a power that is doctrinal or magisterial, and a power that is practical, applicatory, disciplinary.3 Once more, these arc not two formally distinct powers, but one sole power which demands, at one time our adherence to decisions chiefly doctrinal, at another our performance of certain acts chiefly external. And if we may revert to the first distinction we made, we remark that even disciplinary decisions may come from the declaratory' power (such as the suspension of servile of order, which directly opens the gates of heaven: ” Alia clavis est quae non directe sc extendit ad ipsum coelum, sed mediante militante Ecclesia, per quam aliquis ad coelum vadit, dum per eam aliquis excluditur vel admittitur ad consortium Ecclesiae militantis per excommunicationem et absolutionem [ab excommunicatione]; et haec vocatur clazis jurisdictionis in foro causarum; et ideo hanc etiam non sacerdotes habere possunt . . . non proprie dicitur clavis coeli, sed quaedam dispositio ad ipsum.” 1 rhcologians remark that finit/ knowledge divides in the first place into speculative and prac­ tical, but that infinite knowledge, which studies things only in so far as they are known by divine rex-elation (immediate or mediate), is above the division into speculative and practical (Gajetan, in Z, q. I, a. 4, no. iii). ’The Vatican Council speaks of the “ doctrine concerning faith or morals ” (Denz. 1839). So also Cardinal Gasparri in his Catholic Catechism, question 152: “ We are bound in conscience to receive other doctrinal deacts ccnceming faith or morals that are issued by the Apostolic See cither directly or tlirough the Roman Congregations, because of the obedience we owe to the Apostolic Sec, which in this way too exercises an authority given to it by Christ.” 1 The Vatican Council proclaims the supreme jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff over the univer­ sal Church not only in matters of faith and morals, but also in matters concerning the discipline and government of the Church (Denz. 1827 and 1831). H 158 THE PERMANENT JURISDICTION work on certain days), and that even magisterial decisions may come from the canonical power (such as the doctrinal decrees of the Roman Con­ gregations).1 3. The third division considers directly the proximate end, and consequently the degrees, of the jurisdictional power. From this standpoint the latter comprises, by divine ordinance, two degrees: the sovereign pontificate and the sub­ ordinated episcopate.1 2 Although it may serve to mark the degrees of the power of jurisdiction and to distinguish their respective depositaries, this division is not simply material. For the sovereign pontificate is immediately directed to the good of the universal Church, but the episcopal power to the good of a particular Church, and the totality of the episcopal powers (represented for example by the body of bishops during a vacancy of the Apostolic See) to the good of the totality of particular Churches. Now the good of the whole is something other than a particular good or the whole sum of particular goods. It differs from these specifically, since the whole is not simply the sum of its parts, but the sum of its parts plus an order. The sovereign pontificate with its plenary jurisdiction is therefore specifically distinct from the episcopate with its partial jurisdiction. Here we have really two powers, the second being subordinate to the first. 4. Finally there is a fourth way—“accidental” but very important—of dividing the jurisdictional power. Directly, essentially, this division concerns the quality of the assistance promised by God to the jurisdictional authority. But indirectly, by way of consequence, it enables us to classify the jurisdictional power itself. From this standpoint, according to the way in which it is assisted in exercise, the jurisdiction will be called absolutely infallible, or prudentially infallible, or fallible (though not without a real assistance). The kind of adhesion, the kind of obedience, which we owe to the juris­ dictional power and its decisions—the theological obedience of faith due to the divine (and uncreated) Authority, or the moral obedience of piety' due to the ecclesiastical (and created) authority3*5—will depend on whether the rôle of the jurisdictional intervention is purely declaratory or genuinely mediatory'; and on the respective degrees of their infallibility. I have tried to characterize the principles which enable us to divide the permanent jurisdiction. Its great divisions, being made from widely different points of view, naturally cross and become intermingled, sometimes super­ posed. We must now take up the principal divisions in detail, to make them 1 Most authors content themselves with opposing a magisterial power, endowed with absolute infallibility, to a disciplinary power always without it. But, given the express declarations of the Church relating to the magisterial acts of the Roman Congregations (Denz. 1684 and 2008), the magisterial power is not always endowed with an absolute infallibility, 5 Cod. Jur. can., can. 108, §3. 1 Obedience which further on we shall call “ ecclesiastical faith After the Jansenist error several theologians consider that points defined by the Church as infallible but not as mealed arc the object of a special assent for which they reserve the name of “ ecclesiastical faith I think, with the ancients, that these points are believed already with divine faith. However, it is not yet of faith that these points are of faith: that, for the moment, is only a theological opinion, a mode of explaining the assent we give them. 159 f THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE plainer, give them completion, help them throw light on each other, and illustrate them by examples. But let us first set them out in tabular form. 2. SYNOPTIC TABLE OF THESE DIVISIONS fextraordinary or apostolate I formal, ’ into declaratory power canonical power speculative power ( practical power essentially, by causality Jurisdiction -< material ' magisterial power or final, into: permanent or pontificate sub­ divided: disciplinary power particular jurisdiction universal jurisdict ion absolutely prudentially by assistance [fallible The first great division of the permanent jurisdiction is therefore the division into the declaratory power and the canonical power. II. FIRST DIVISION OF THE PERMANENT JURISDICTION: DECLARATORY POWER AND CANONICAL POWER The first division of the permanent jurisdiction is into two powers formally distinct: that of declaring, disclosing, giving expression to decisions that are immediately divine; and that of enacting, establishing, prescribing and promulgating decisions that are immediately ecclesiastical. The former power is the higher. The latter power, implied in the former as an effect is implied in its cause, exists only to sene it, and, in a way, to prolong it. r. THE DECLARATORY POWER A. The Rôle of the Declaratory Power If God Himself should deign to speak to us directly, the cause, basis and end of our acceptance of and assent to His word would be nothing less than THE PERMANENT JURISDICTION of our assent, may avail Himself of a created means, for example His Church, to show us what arc the tilings, what are the truths, to which He would have us assent. The power thus given the Church will not then be the cause, basis and end of our assent, but only its condition sine qua non; for without it we should not know to what propositions to give this assent which has God for Cause, Basis and End. That, then, is the function of the declaratory power—to determine what pronouncements are to be received on the immediate authority of God. It does not interpose between God and ourselves as an intermediary or instru­ mental cause; it intervenes as a simple condition needed to put us in touch with the divine word. Must we then conclude that it is not a jurisdictional power? On the con­ trary, the declaratory power is the jurisdictional power in its highest, purest and most divine rôle. It binds, since it determines what is to be received on the authority of God; and it looses, since it is competent to announce, for instance, the cessation of the ceremonial precepts of the Old Law'. It defines with authority the limits of the divine forum. It is competent to designate certain acts, w'hcther interior or exterior, as required of men. The declaratory power is evidently ministerial.1 But, as it intervenes only to propose truths that come immediately from God, and its rôle is that of a pure condition sine qua non. Strictly speaking therefore, its rôle is not instru­ mental; we should not confuse it with the strictly instrumental power of order, with the sacerdotal character, w’hich enables the priest to remit sins in the sacrament of Penance. To express the same thing from another point of view, and to compare the immediate contact set up between the soul and God in the act of divine faith, and the immediate contact set up between the soul and God in the reception of the sacraments, we say that in the first case the contact is immediate with a “supposital” immediacy: for then the Church intervenes in no way, even instrumentally, as the basis of the assent of faith, but only to designate w'hat is to be held as of faith; whereas the contact of the soul with God through the power of order and the sacraments, which act as instruments, that is as intermediary supposita, can be immediate only with a “virtual” immediacy.2 B. The Declaratory Power Manifestation of the the Highest Permanent Jurisdiction The office of the declaratory power is infallibly to propose the content of the Christian revelation to the world. Its rôle is not, as we have just said, to provide, even instrumentally, a basis for the assent of divine faith; but to make this assent possible by defining what is to be held with divine faith. For two aspects have to be distinguished in the act of faith : its basis and motive, 1 “ /Xuctoritas autem Ecclesiae est ministra objecti fidei ” (Cajetan, in q. i, a. i, no. x). ’ IΓ I myself shift something out of its place, there is an immediacy of the subject, of the sup­ positum; if I displace it with a stick, there is merely an immediacy of virtue, of effort, of power. 161 4 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE i. the authority of God revealing; and its condition, i.c. the authority of e. the Church proposing the revelation. If faith, says Cajetan, “inclines the mind to adhere to certain truths proposed, it is because God has revealed them; but that God has revealed this or that, in this sense or that other sense, this we believe because the Church so teaches."1 It is clear that the declarator)· power, the power to propose divine revela­ tion infallibly, obliges and binds of itself. It is empowered, it has authority, to demand that its message, once sufficiently proposed, shall be believed with divine faith under pain of mortal sin against faith. It has no authority to establish the assent of faith, but it has full authority to define the statements on which this assent is under obligation to fall. Hence it is an authentic jurisdictional power.1 It extends, as of right, to all men. And it can prescribe purely interior acts of faith1 as well as those that arc outwardly manifested. The declaratory power, infallibly prof ing the object of Catholic faith, is therefore to be considered as the highest form of the jurisdictional power. 1 loc. cit. The First Truth, sap Cajetan, a little further on. is the very reason for believing, “ipsa ratio credendi'*; the pronouncement of the Church is the condition by which the first Truth proposes and explains to us what He is Himself, and what else is to be believed, “ conditio qua Veritas prima proponit et explicat seipsam, et aha credenda.” This condition is necessarily required, not to provide a basis for faith fisre and simple, nor yet, for example, for the faith of the first man, or of the angels before their fall, but to establish normally cur faith, as wc are to-day (ibid., q. 5, a. 3, no. i). . * In his treatise De Ecclesia Christi, Rome 1921, pp. 330-1, Billot affirms that the magisterium, strictly and formally as such, carries with it no right to demand assent. Against that wc must set the (act that to speak as a master is not merely to speak, but to speak with authority, as St. Thomas notes after Aristotle, “ oportet addiscentem credere ” (II-11, q. 2, a. 3). However this may be, the diriru magisterium, the only one we are now considering, lap an obligation of itself on all men once the revelation has been adequately proposed to them. It is not confined to “ proposing, explaining, defining ” the truth revealed. It proposes, explains and defines it with authority, that is to say juris· dicticnally, Billot does not include the magisterium under jurisdiction “ quia aliud est proponere, exponere, definire veritatem revelatam, quod pertinet ad magisterium; aliud vero regere imperio actus subditorum, quod pertinet ad jurisdictionem.” But to propose the revealed truth with authority to all men—is that anything else than “ regere imperio actus subditorum ”? In the De Ecclesiae Sacramentis, Rome 1895, vol· II, p. 398, the same author wrote: ** Ecclesia docens, non nudum exercet magisteriam, quantumvis infallible, sed veram jurisdictionem doctrinalem, vere ligando fideles ad credendum id quod in canonibus seu decretis fidei proponitur. Cum autem obligatio quae inde enascitur, non ecclesiastici juris sit, sed divini, dicendum remanet quod in hujusmodi, Ecclesia ligat ex potestati instrumentale” Consequently the faithful arc bound to believe (1) by an obligation of divine law to obey the ixifallible raelaiion, an obligation common to all men; (2) by an obligation of divine law to obey the doctrinal jurisdiction of the Church; (3) by an obliga­ tion of ecclesiastical law. Thus all jurisdictional character is refused to the infallible magisterium, but only to annex to it a ” true doctrinal jurisdiction ” also obliging under divine law’, and this—a new difficulty—of the strictly instrumental order. Would it not be preferable to say simply that, when the Christian revelation has been sufficiently proposed to men, they are bound to believe with an assent of supernatural faith, haring for “ foundation ” the uncreated authority of God, and for necessary “ condition ” the infallible magisterium, that is to say the created authority of the Church, bringing the object cf faith before them? “ Revelatio divina est ratio formalis objecti fidei; auctoritas autem Ecclesiae est ministra objecti fidei ” (Cajetan, in Il-II, q. 1, a. 1, no. x). ’ Palmieri, who rightly maintains that the power of teaching is jurisdictional, draws the con­ clusion, not without some hesitation, that in virtue of this pow er the Church can prescribe purely interior acts: “ Etiamsi habeatur ratio tantum actus mere interioris fidei, advertere licet non admodum firmum esse fundamentum cui innititur sententia negans [Ecclesiam posse praecipere talem actum] ... Cum ergo jurisdictio Ecclesiae sit altioris ordinis quam politica . . . non ridetur ad solos exteriores actus restringenda ” (De Romano Pontifice cum Prolegomena de Ecclesia, Rome 1877, Ρ· 158). 162 THE PERMANENT JURISDICTION C. The Bipartite Division into of the Powers of the Church Sacramental and Jurisdictional Power to be Preferred to the Tripartite In consequence, the tripartite division of the powers of the Church into the power of order, the power of magisterium, and the power ofjurisdiction, is to be rejected. We must substitute a bipartite division into a power of order and a power of jurisdiction. Let us briefly recall here (1) the reasons that justify this bipartite division; (2) some authorities in its favour; and (3) the inconveniences of the tripartite division. 1. a. Christ, the Head of the Church, acts upon her, says St. Thomas, in two ways: by interior influx and by exterior government.1 The first action, which communicates grace, pertains to Christ’s priesthood; the second, which communicates truth, pertains to His kingship. When Christ returned to heaven He left on earth, so as to remain in contact with men, a ministerial participation of His priesthood—and that is the sacramental power ordained for the hidden conveyance of grace; and a ministerial participation of His kingship—and that is the jurisdictional power ordained for the outward proclamation of the truth, b. According as the jurisdiction is concerned with the founding of the Church by the Apostles, or with her conservation through­ out the ages, it subdivides into extraordinary and permanent jurisdiction. These two jurisdictions act through an outward voice announcing the truth with authority, and are thereby jointly distinguished from the power of order which acts in a strictly instrumental way to communicate grace. Where is the extraordinary jurisdiction to be placed in the tripartite division? c. The ordinary jurisdiction is a moral power, conferred by way of designation·, but the power of order, and, more generally, the sacramental power, is a physical power conferred by consecration. St. Thomas, when he asks himself whether the schismatics still retain any power, mentions only these two powers of the Church.2 d. A jurisdictional power transmits its message with authority; it is competent to bind in conscience. Now these characters are found in the magisterium. Even when she proposes purely speculative truth the Church acts jurisdictionally, “tamquam auctoritatem habens”; she has the right to exact obedience. She does not teach like the philosophers and the scientists. It is good to keep this constantly in mind. 2. a. If, as Boniface VIII defined at the end of the Bull Unam Sanctam, “Every human creature is subject to the Roman Pontiff”,3 it is not in virtue of that Pontiff’s power to rule the baptized alone through ecclesiastical law; it is by reason of his power to preach the Gospel everywhere. The submission of every creature is required by the sufficiently manifested act of the magis­ terium itself, not by a superadded ecclesiastical power which can reach none but the baptized. The infallible magisterium of the Roman Pontiff is therefore a jurisdictional power, b. The Council of Florence declares that, ’ III, q. 8, a. 6. « II—II, q. 39, a. 3. THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE in virtue of the “primacy” with which he is invested, the Roman Pontiff is the “father and doctor of all Christians”.1 Whence we see that the juris­ dictional primacy involves the magisterial power, c. The same conclusion emerges from the affirmation of the Vatican Council that Peter, having received directly from Christ “the primacy of jurisdiction over the whole Church of God became by this fact, “ the prince and chief of the Apostles, the pillar of the faith, thefoundation of the Catholic Church by which last words is certainly meant the infallible magisterium. The Vatican Council declares next that “the power ofjurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff claims the obedience of the faithful in matters not only offaith and morals but also discipline”, and that the Roman Pontiff is the principle “of unity, whether of faith or of communion”.4 To give these texts their full meaning is to recognize, I think, that the function of the jurisdictional power is to define the faith itself, and to impose it primarily in virtue of divine authority, and not by any subsidiary title or by merely disciplinary measures. Finally the Council— speaking of the "supreme power ofjurisdiction over the whole Church ”,s which a little earlier, echoing the words of the Council of Florence, it had called a "primacy",* namely "the primacy of jurisdiction over the whole Church of God given by Christ to the Apostle Peter”7—declares that in “this apostolic primacy" which belongs to the Roman Pontiff as successor of Peter, “ir also comprised the supreme power of magisterium: “Ipso autem apostolico primatu .. . supremam quoque magisterii potestatem comprehendi, haec sancta sedes semper tenuit.”8 How could it be more clearly said that the supreme power of magisterium, with which the Council goes on to deal in detail, is itself comprised in the more general power of jurisdiction it has just dealt with? Yet Billot sees in this “quoque” an “egregia confirmatio” of the irreduci­ bility of the magisterium to the jurisdiction ! d. The tripartite division, it is true, is found several times, but accidentally, in the Primum Schema Constitu­ tionis Dogmaticae de Ecclesia Christi, submitted for examination to the Fathers of the Vatican Council. For example, in Chapter 4 on the visibility of the Church: “Hence the visible magisterium by which the faith, to be interiorly believed and exteriorly professed, is publicly proposed. Hence also the visible ministry, wliich carries out in public the visible mysteries of God whence men receive interior sanctification, and God the worship that is due to Him. Hence the visible government, which orders the intercommunion of the mem­ bers with each other, and directs the whole exterior and public life of the faithful in the Church.” Then, in Chapter 8, on the indefectibility of the Church: “That is why the Church of Christ can never lose her properties and her gifts, her sacred magisterium, her ministry, and her government." How­ ever, the bipartite division appears in Chapter 10, treating expressly of the power of the Church; after a reminder that in the Church is a divinely instituted triple power to “sanctify, teach and govern”, comes: “Butsince the ’ibid., 694. ’ibid., 1824. 4 ibid., 183t. ’ ibid., 1822 * ibid., 1827. * ibid., 1826. ’ ibid., 1822. * ibid., 1832. THE PERMANENT JURISDICTION power of the Church is double·, power of order and power ofjurisdiction . . ", and of this last power it is said that it extends “not only to matters offaith and morals, but also, etc.”1 e. To these witnesses let us add the names of some modern theologians who remain faithful to the ancient bipartite division. D. Palmieri, S.J., writes: “The Church’s authority to teach, to which corres­ ponds the obligation on the faithful to believe what is proposed by the magis­ terium, is a part of the power of jurisdiction . . . it is comprised in the genus of jurisdictional power.’’2 But Palmieri is perhaps responsible for many misconceptions when he proposes sufficiently to justify his thesis by explaining that to the obligation to be believed and obeyed imposed by the divine law, the magisterium can add an obligation under ecclesiastical law. F. X. Wernz, S.J., says: “The ecclesiastical power as a whole is divided into two species only, namely the power ofjurisdiction and the power of order. The power of jurisdiction, taken as a genus, is divided in its turn into the power of magisterium, concerned with what is to be believed, and the power of government, concerned with what is to be done.”3 J. V. de Groot, O.P., writes: “The opinion of those who, retaining the bipartite division of the powers, put the magisterium under jurisdiction, seems to be the truer”4: R. M. Schultes, O.P., “The power of jurisdiction divides into the power of the magisterium and that of commanding or ruling in the strict sense.”5 Père Marin-Sola, O.P., was, I may add, of the same opinion; it was he who first drew my attention to the inconveniences of the tripartite division, which I had earlier accepted. Finally, Cardinal Gasparri writes in his Catechism (Question 140) : “That she might attain the end for which she was founded, Christ the Lord bestowed on His Church the power of ‘jurisdiction’ and the power of ‘order’; the power of jurisdiction includes the power of teaching.’’6 (However, the references to the Gospel texts given in the notes seem to bring us back to the tripartite division.)7 3. The tripartite division, championed above all by J. B. Franzelin, S.J., who relies on Suarez, and by Billot, seems to present some notable difficulties. a. It leads Billot, as wc have said, to invent the notion of a doctrinal juris­ diction distinct from the infallible magisterium, and binding as of divine right, b. In order to distinguish the magisterium from jurisdiction, the former is first of all defined by saying that it aims at “proposing, explaining and defining the divine doctrine infallibly"—thus Franzelin8 and Billot? Then it is said elsewhere that the magisterium extends over a field where 1 Collectio Lacensis, vol. VIT, cols. 568 and 570. 3 De Romano Pontifice, p. 156. 3 Ius Decretalium, Rome 1901, vol. Ill, p. 5. 4 Summa Apologetica de Ecclesia, Ratisbon 1906, p. 389. 5 De Ecclesia Catholica, Paris 1925, p. 334. 4 English ed., London 1936. p. 101. ' More recently, Père J. H. Nicolas {Revue Thomiste, 1946, p. 425) has shown a preference for the bipartite division. • De Ecclesia Christi, Rome 1887, p. 60. ’ loc. cit., p. 334. nri ! THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE there is no longer any question of infallible authority, of divine faith, but simply of “an authority of a doctrinal providence”.1 But how do these authors distinguish this last “magisterial" domain, in which the Church speaks on its own responsibility, from the domain that they call “juris­ dictional”? c. Finally, after distinguishing the powers of order, of the divine magisterium, and ofjurisdiction from each other, and declaring this last to be the domain of the purely ecclesiastical forum, they seem to upset everything by admitting the existence, as Billot does, of an “instrumental ” jurisdiction, exercised in the full divine forum, to which is to be attributed even the sacramental power of absolving from sin.s There exists, it is true, a tripartite division to which we shall often refer. It is based on Scripture, in which Christ is set forth as the principle or source of the priesthood, of grace, and of truth. But that is not a simple division of the hierarchic powers. It is a division by the three formalities under which Christ, Priest, Saviour, and King, gives Himself in the Church; whence results in her created soul, and so throughout her being, a triple incorporation into Christ, by the sacramental characters, by the sacramental graces, and by jurisdictional truth. D. The Field “Infallible Declaratory Power: Truths” and “Dognl-vtic Facts” of the Does the Church use her declaratory power only when she proposes truths of Catholic faith”, that is truths she defines as “revealed”, as to be held by “divine faith”? I think not. She makes use of it also, in my opinion, when she teaches “infallible truths”, that is propositions defined infallibly, yet not expressly defined as revealed', and also what arc called in theology "dogmatic facts”. The question of the real and objective inclusion in the revealed deposit of these “infallible truths” and “dogmatic facts” will be considered further on; and we shall see that they pertain to the declaratory and not to the canonical power. For the moment it will be enough to remark that a message proposed with a divine and absolute infallibility puts us in contact with the very authority of God Himself, before which all other authority is effaced and can do no more than manifest or declare His intentions. If, as St. Thomas says, the created witnesses are infallible only when they are rectified by the uncreated Truth, and, consequently, only when they no longer put before us a created testimony, but the very testimony of God Himself who speaks,3 it must be held that all the infallible definitions of the Church arc ‘See Franzelin, De Di:ina Tradilime et Scriptura, Rome 1875, Ρ· Ι2θ> Billot, loc. cit., P· 429· . '■! 1 loc. du, pp. 458-460. On the “ instrumental ” jurisdiction, sec below, p. J70. ’“Omnis creata ventas defectibilis est, nisi quatenus per Veritatem increatam rectificatur. Unde, neque hominis neque angeli testimonio assentire, infallibilitcr in veritatem duceret, nisi quantum, in eis, l&jueniis Dei testimonium consideratur *’ (Dr Veritate, q. 14, a. 8). It is the first argu- 166 ........... THE PERMANENT JURISDICTION acts of hcr declaratory power and manifest to us decisions that are immedi­ ately divine. E. Some of its Other Applications It remains to clear up a rather delicate point. Certain interventions of the jurisdictional power of the Church in the divine forum, even indeed in the sacramental forum, interventions whose existence is admitted by all theologians but whose justification is not alto­ gether easy, seem to me to be more readily explained as soon as we agree to consider them as acts of the declaratory power. I refer to the dispensations sometimes granted by the Church from the divine obligations arising from an oath, from a vow, from a consummated non-sacramental marriage, and from a non-consummated sacramental marriage. Let us recall first, after St. Thomas, that the precepts of the Decalogue admit of no dispensation.1 Nobody disputes it as regards the precepts of the first table, concerned with our duties to God. But Scotus, in view of the command to Abraham to immolate his son, disputes it for the precepts of the second table, concerned with our duties to our neighbour. Let us say never­ theless with St. Thomas and Cajetan that the precepts of the second table in themselves, and as regards the obligations to justice they contain, can by no means be dispensed: the slaying of an innocent person, theft, adultery are always forbidden. God however, who is Creator, can dispense from a precept in a certain respect, or, more precisely, can so completely transform the matter of the precept that the act which previously was sinful, now embracing new moral matter, ceases to be so. The treasures of the Egyp­ tians belong to God; He can take them away without a shadow of injustice, and (that at least is the explanation given by the ancients) order the Israelites to do so in His name. Isaac’s fife is God’s; He can decide to cut it short ment propounded by P. Marin-Sola in his book L'évolution homogène du dogme catholique, vol. I, to show that M ecclesiastical faith ”—if by that we understand, as do most modem theologians, adhe­ sion to truths defined by the Church as infallible, but not defined as revealed—is, in reality, “ of the same species as divine faith in the articles of faith ” (p. 423), that “ ecclesiastical faith is a divine faith and neitlier human nor intermediary ” (p. 422), that “ the object assigned in our days to ecclesiastical faith can be wholly defined as of divine faith’* (p. 401). Since ecclesiastical faith, thus understood, embraces truths which “ without being formally contained in the revealed deposit arc nevertheless in necessary connection with it, or indispensable to its preservation ’* (p. 403), P. MarinSola would not have us imagine that “ connected with and relative to the deposit mean outside the deposit, something that is no part of it, which is alien to it, though necessary for its conservation ” (p. 439). He explains that “ the object of the Church’s infallibility is not the revelation and other things not revealed, but the revelation and its related trudis—related truths which the Church neitlier creates nor invents, but discovers and defines. They were already in the revealed deposit, as St. Thomas indicates by giving them the classic name of revelabilia, things discoverable in the primitive deposit.” But it has been remarked that the meaning of revelabilia in I, q. 1, a. 3, is somewhat diff­ erent from that taken by Gardeil and Marin-Sola, following numerous ancient commentators: " Revelabile means knowable by revelation, just as intelligibile or sensibile means knowable by intelli­ gence or sense” (cf. M. R. Gagnebet, O.P., “Un essai sur le problème théologique”, Rerue Thomiste, 1939, no. i, p. 137). 1 I—II, q. 100, a. 8. 167 I II THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE when it pleases Him without shadow of sin or homicide, in all justice, inas­ much as death is the wages of the first sin; and He can make Abraham the instrument of His most holy will. Spouses arc His; He can withdraw one of them from the conjugal bond by death, or by a will such as that which He showed to Osec (according to St. Thomas' interpretation) enjoining him to espouse an adulteress.1 What then shall we conclude? In none of these cases was the divinely-given precept abolished; but a divine pronouncement, made by way of a particular revelation, indicated that God withdrew from the operation of the precept some determinate matter which it had previously covered? And, without doubt, these biblical incidents are unique events in the world’s history. But the way in which the theologians have justified them enables one, I believe, to explain how, in a domain restricted in ad­ vance, the Church in her turn can relieve her children of certain obligations under the divine law. For obligations under the divine law arise in two distinct domains. “The first flow immediately from the divine law, prior to every' determination of the human will. They lie, without the slightest doubt, wholly outside the jurisdiction of the Church. They belong to the very framework of the King­ dom of God, which the Church, of course, has no mission to dissolve. But there are other obligations which, although contracted in virtue of the divine law, bear on us only as a result of some act of our own human will, such as those that arise from an oath, from a vow, from a sacred contract. These are susceptible of dispensation; since it is quite appropriate to provide a remedy for the insufficiencies of human deliberation, which is neither able to weigh everything nor to foresee all the circumstances in which a spon­ taneously and freely accepted obligation may be opposed to a greater good.”3 There then we have the proper field for the interventions of the Church. How are they to be justified? Must we fall back on the notion of a strictly instrumental jurisdictional power?4 Let us rather try to apply here the lSt. Thomas, I-II, q. too. a. 8, ad 3, and comm, of Cajetan; cf. I-Π, q. 94, a. 5, ad 2. StThomas explains Peter’s punishment of Ananias and Sapphira in a similar way: “ Petrus autem non propria auctoritate vel manu Ananiam et Sapphiram interfecit, sed magis divinam sententiam de eorum morte promulgavit ’ (II—II, q. 64, a. 4, ad 1). 1 Similarly we might say that the law of nature that forbids the dead to come to life again does not cease to be true even when God, acting with a higher power, effects the resurrection of a dead man. ’ L. Billot, S. J., Dt Ecclesia Christi, p. 459. A superior who dispenses, says St- Thomas, “ deter­ minat id quod cadebat sub obligatione deliberationis humanae, quae non potuit omnia circum­ spicere ” (II-II, q. 88, a. to, ad 2). 4 Then we should have to recognize, as many contemporary’ theologians do, two jurisdictional powers: one that belongs properly to the Church and is limited to the ecclesiastical or canonical forum, and one that is instrumental and extends to the divine forum. That presents several diffi­ culties. (1) To be strictly instrumental is characteristic of the power of order; the power of juris­ diction acts, on the contrary, by way of outward proposition, now as a pure condition, now as a true intermediary cause. R. M. Schultes, O.P., who refers us to van Noort, writes: “ Potestas ordinis est pure et stricU instrumentalist potestas jurisdictionis, licet sit originis divinae et supematuralis, non est mere instrumentons sed zero modo principalis ” (De Ecclesia Catholica, p. 334). (2) If, in the sacrament of Penance, the sentence of the priest acts instrumentally to remit sin. that is precisely because it is an act of the power of order: 0 oportet igitur, ” says St- Thomas, “ quod potestas ordinis se extendat 168 THE PERMANENT JURISDICTION solution given by the ancients to the problems mentioned above. The Church, properly speaking, never intervenes to suspend the divine obligation itself. It docs so only to declare with authority that, by reason of a just and duly proportionate cause, God Himself decides to withdraw such and such a determinate matter from the divine obligation. But here the declaration is no longer made by way of a particular revelation. Neither is it made, as in the case of the Pauline privilege, by way of a public revelation set forth in the canonical Scriptures. It is made by way of the jurisdictional power of the Church, authentically pronouncing that the matter of such and such a vow or such and such an oath is no longer approved by God,*1 that such and such a person, bound by a possibly consummated but non-sacramental marriage, or a non-consummated sacramental marriage, is now released therefrom. God alone therefore can release from an obligation incurred in virtue of the divine law. He never docs so by abolishing the sacrosanct prescriptions of the divine law; He simply withdraws particular persons from the bonds they have contracted in the divine forum by act of their own will, on con­ dition that these bonds have not, of their very nature, become inseparable from these persons, as happens in the case of a consummated sacramental marriage. But how should we ever know that God had decided to release men from their divine obligations if He did not declare it Himself? It is precisely the function of the jurisdictional power of the Church to manifest authoritatively these divine decisions. It is not, as the sacramental power is, “instrumental”; it is “declaratory”. The mission of the declaratory power, infallibly assisted, is to bind or loose men by authoritatively proposing decisions that are immediately divine. The particular power of loosing by authentically declaring that in certain circumstances God releases someone from the obligations of a vow, of a non-sacramental consummated marriage,2 or of a sacramental non- U ■ ■'•ii Μ ! T ad remissionem peccatorum per dispensationem illorum sacramentorum quae ordinantur ad peccati remissionem: cujusmodi sunt baptismus et poenitentia ” (IV Contra Gtnles, cap. Ixxiv). (3) The Church intervenes in the divine forum by the exercise of the infallible magisterium. That is cer­ tainly a jurisdictional power. But it is not instrumental. For faith is grounded immediately, with a supposilal immediacy, on the divine authority itself. Further, if the magisterium needs to be safeguarded against error by the divine assistance, that is precisely because it is not an instrumental power. (4) It is useless to superimpose on the infallible magisterium, as Billot does (De Ecclesiae Sacramentis, vol. II, p. 398), “ a true doctrinal jurisdiction ” of an “ instrumental" character whereby the teaching Church would add to the divine obligation to believe the revelation, a second obli­ gation under divine law (cf. Excursus IV, “ Is There an Instrumental Jurisdiction? ” below, p. 170). 1 “ Auctoritate superioris dispensantis fit ut hoc quod continebatur sub voto non contineatur, inquantum determinatur in hoc casu hoc non esse congruam materiam voti. Et ideo cum praelatus Ecclesiae dispensat in voto, non dispensat in praecepto juris naturalis, vel divini; sed determinat id quod cadebat sub obligatione deliberationis humanae, quae non potuit omnia circumspicere ” (Sl Thomas, II-II, q. 88, a. 10, ad 2). 1 Λ case of dissolution of a consummated non-sacramental marriage is provided for in the scriptural revelation itself, God declaring, not simply through an infallibly assisted jurisdictional power, but by the voice of the divinely inspired r\postle St. Paul, that a marriage between pagans can be dissolved when, one of the spouses being converted to the faith, die other refuses to cohabit according to the law of the Gospel (1 Cor. vii. 12-16). ___________ THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE consummated marriage, is part of the general declaratory power. The Church is infallible in claiming this power and in determining the general conditions for its valid exercise.1 Since however its exercise can bear only on particular facts which cannot involve the fate of the universal Church, it is never infallibly guaranteed. The other acts of the declaratory power, resulting in the definition of such and such a truth or dogmatic fact, are always infallible; but the acts of the special power to loose from a vow or a marriage can always be invalidated by defect of some requisite condition.1 EXCURSUS IV IS THERE AN INSTRUMENTAL JURISDICTION? Many contemporary theologians and canonists, following Billot, recognize two jurisdictions in the Church: a jurisdiction of the proper forum, having its com­ plete and perfect existence in the Church, and used by her as a principal cause to bind and to loose; and a jurisdiction of the internal forum, having its complete being in God and exercised by the Church only as an instrument {De Ecclesia Christi, 1921, p. 451). As against this appeal to an “instrumental” jurisdiction— which others call “vicarious'*—let us pass briefly in review some particularly delicate problems concerning the sacramental forum and the jurisdictional forum. In each case, as it seems to me, the Church intervenes not in any strictly instru­ mental manner, but much rather (whether she merely “declares” some directly divine decision, or “promulgates” some directly ecclesiastical measure) as supplying the conditions under which the divine interventions can ultimately proceed. 1 : Determinations bearing on the essence of certain sacraments. Christ in­ stituted all the sacraments immediately; some, namely Baptism and the Eucharist, in all their details; others—such at least is the opinion of many theologians—by giving the Church power to determine what matter and form should be valid. It was thus, according to the Council of Florence (Denz. 698 and 701), that, in the sacrament of Confirmation, the imposition of hands was replaced, in East and West, by the application of chrism; and that, in the sacrament of Order, the imposition of hands was replaced, in the West, by the tradition of the instruments (cf. P. Galtier, S.J., Diet, de thiol, cath., art. “Imposition des mains”, cols. 1386 and 1410). Thus again may be explained the fact that in the Middle Ages the indicative formula of the sacrament of Penance replaced the deprecatory (cf. A. Vacant, Diet, de thiol, cath., art. Absolution”, cols. 247 and 252). Can then the Church make or change the sacraments? No: it is clear enough that in making the aforesaid determinations the Church’s whole action amounted to choosing, among the various means suitable for signifying a sacramental grace, that one of those means which Christ would 1 The Council of Trent defines that non-consummatcd sacramental marriage is dissolved by solemn religious profession: “ Si quis dixerit, matrimonium ratum, non consummatum, per solemnem religionis professionem alterius conjugum non dirimi, anathema sit ” (Denz. 976). 1 Thus if oaten breads are inadvertently mixed with wheaten, an act of consecration would be void of effect. 170 ttm THE PERMANENT JURISDICTION henceforth use. She intervened in a lateral manner, as conditioning, but not as efficient cause; she is mera conditio qua posita suum sortitur effectum institutio divina, as Billot himself here admirably puts it {De Ecclesia Sacramentis, 1915, vol. I, p. 37). Here therefore is no jurisdiction equivalent or superior to the power of order, but a jurisdiction at the service of the power of order. As for the “power of excellence”, that is to say the power of instituting sacraments and conferring grace, that belongs to none but Christ, who communicated it neither to the Apostles nor to the Church (St. Thomas, III, q. 64, a. 4; Suppl., q. 17, a. 1, q. 19, a. 2). 2: Penance. Here we come to the most difficult point. Two things are to be carefully distinguished: a. the power of absolving, conferred by way of consecration; b. the conditions of its valid exercise, conferred by way of investiture. a. By giving the Apostles and their successors the power of retaining or re­ mitting sins (John xx. 22) Jesus gave them simultaneously the power to appreciate in each particular ease whether to remit or to retain, and the power to pass a sentence not only signifying but also effecting the remission of sins. Priests, said the Council of Trent, arc “as authorities and judges to whom all mortal sins are to be submitted ’ (Denz. 899). Their power, called the power of the keys, involves therefore two acts: that of taking cognisance of the sin (key of knowledge), and that of passing sentence (key of power) (cf. St. Thomas, IV Con. Gen., cap. Ixxii; Suppl., q. 17, a. 3). There we certainly have a judicial power, “potestas judiciaria” (St. Thomas); “actus judicialis” {Council of Trent, Denz. 919). But an altogether exceptional judicial power. First of all because conferred by way of consecration, like the power of order {Suppl., q. 17, a. 2, ad 2), and not by way of simple investiture, like the power of jurisdiction; in fact it is the power of order and, as such, distinct from that of jurisdiction—“The character [sacerdotal], the power of consecrating, and the power of the keys [in the sacrament of penance],” say's St. Thomas, “are essentially one same and sole reality; they are distinguishable from each other only by a distinction of reason" {Suppl., q. 17, a. 2, ad 1). Next because the judicial act, in Penance, not only signifies but also effects the re­ mission of sins—“ the words of the priest operate instrumentally' in this sacrament by the divine virtue, as in the other sacraments, " says St. Thomas (III, q. 74,a. 3, ad 3). The act of remitting or retaining sins is therefore a sacramental sentence, that is to say a sacrament having a sentential or judicial form (whereas the form is de­ precatory in Extreme Unction and imperative in Holy Order). A “sacramental sentence ”—is not that precisely the instrumental jurisdiction we have hitherto looked for in vain? And in fact it is, in my opinion, the one case of instrumental jurisdiction we shall have to retain. But a jurisdiction having this peculiarity : that it brings us out of thefield of the jurisdictional power into that of the power of order : (“Sacramentalis absolutionis principium,” says Cajctan, “non est potestas jurisdictionis, sed potestas ordinis” {Quaestio de Ministro sacramenti Poenitentiae, edit, leonina, vol. XII, p. 358, no. iii). There are but two powers, the sacramental power which adopts a form, whether it be indicative or deprecatory', or imperative, or sentential and judicial; and the jurisdictional power, declaratory' or canonical, which is proper to the Church. The power of absolving from sin is a jurisdictional power of order, wholly distinct from the jurisdictional power ofjurisdiction. b. But from the fact that its form is judicial, the sacrament of Penance requires the intervention of the canonical jurisdictional power by its very nature and 1 |l THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE necessarily, thinks St. Thomas (Supply q. 8, a. 4). The Council of Trent seems to say likewise: "Since it is of the very nature of an act ofjudgment that the sentence can bear only on subjects”, the Church has always considered that absolution given by a priest not jurisdictionally approved is invalid (Denz. 903). For since in the case of Penance the sacramental power takes on a judicial form, and since it would be impossible to exercise a judicial power on those in no way designated as its subjects, it is required by divine law, and by the very nature of Penance, that an ecclesiastical jurisdiction should intervene to designate the subjects on whom the priest’s sacramental power of absolving is to take effect. In other words, the confession is to be made, not to any priest whatever, but to a priest who has been "approved”. And without that, every absolution would be invalid for lack of valid matter on which to take effect; in the same manner, says St. Thomas, as a consecration uttered over anv other than wheaten bread would be invalid. This is St. Thomas' constant doctrine; for example, "Omnis potestas spiritualis datur cum aliqua consecratione. Et ideo clavis cum ordine datur; sed exeeutio clavis indiget materia debita, quae est plebs subdita per jurisdictionem; et ideo, ante­ quam sacerdos jurisdictionem habeat, habet claves sed non habet actum clavium. Et quia clavis per actum definitur, ideo in definitione clavis ponitur aliquid ad jurisdictionem [ecclesiasticam] pertinens” (Supply q. 17, a. 2, ad 2). So also Cajetan at the place cited previously: "Sacramentalis absolutionis principium non est potestas jurisdictionis, sed potestas ordinis: potestas autem jurisdictionis concurrit quoad hoc solum quod/na/ de peccatore subditum, vel simpliciter, vel quoad talia peccata.” It may be objected that the Pope, who possesses the sovereign jurisdiction, cannot therefore be the subject of a sacramental absolution. The answer is simple: the sacramental absolution, which depends on the power of order, has for valid matter a sinner entitled to it by the power of jurisdiction possessed either sovereignly, and there we have the case of the Pope, or by way of participation, and there wc have the case of the rest of the faithfiil. It is really on the penitent, not on the priest, that the power of jurisdiction bestows a favour, confers a right: the favour, the right, to be absolved by such and such a priest. Here once more therefore, in the case of Penance, which seems to have been so needlessly confused, the ecclesiastical jurisdiction intervenes as a mere indis­ pensable condition, and on the plane of material causality. It is at the sendee of the power of order. (3) Confirmation and Order. The bishop is the only minister of the sacra­ ments of Confirmation and of Holy Orders. Nevertheless a simple priest, duly invested by the Church, can confer Confirmation and certain degrees of Order. Docs it not seem here that investiture by the Church intervenes in the field of the sacramental power? With John of St. Thomas (III, q. 63; disp. 25, a. 2, no. 98; vol. IX, p. 345) we may reply: Every priest has, as a priest, the physical sacramental power to confer Confirmation and certain Orders. But this sacramental power can be inhibited as to its valid exercise by ecclesiastical jurisdiction; not in the case of bishops, because bishops, even if schismatic or heretical, can always validly exercise it under divine law; but in the case of simple priests. This generù inhibition of the sacramental power of simple priests as regards the conferring of Confirmation and certain Orders, acts in the manner of an impeding condition which remains, as in the preceding cases, on the plane of material causality. The 172 THE PERMANENT JURISDICTION jurisdictional act by which it is loosed in favour of such and such a priest in no wise therefore encroaches on the field of the sacramental power. (4) Matrimony. This gives rise to several problems. How are we to explain, in the first place, the Church’s power to fix the conditions of validity of marriages between the baptized? It must be said that God has empowered His Church to determine in the last resort the general aptitude of the baptized to contract a valid marriage. In die exercise of this right the Church intervenes—only in the order of dispositive or material causality. How arc we to explain the fact that the Church can dissolve a non-sacramcntal marriage even if consummated, and a non-consummated sacramental marriage? Marriage is essentially a mutual donation and acceptance between spouses. Considered in itself and relatively to its ends this engagement, made for life and ordered to the whole work of bringing up children, is, in itself, indissoluble, that is to say it contains no internal cause of dissolution. That does not mean that it will be preserved from every exterior cause of dissolution; death, for example, will eventually undo it. To say that an angel is immortal is to say that in his essence there is no interior principle tending to disagregation; it does not mean that he is necessarily guaranteed against annihilation from without; absolutely speaking, God could suspend the influx by which He keeps the angels in existence. Like­ wise, though marriage is in its essence indissoluble, it is not guaranteed against annulment from without. But in the case of a consummated sacramental marriage, God, as we know by divine faith, definitively refuses to dissolve it otherwise than by death. The consummation, properly speaking, in no way touches the essence of sacramental marriage; it leaves it as it is, not even strengthening the bond. But it shuts the door against every attempt to dissolve the marriage from without. Why? Because God has so decreed. And this will of His, to start with, is clearly set out in Scripture and the primitive tradition, the full meaning of which has been brought down to us by the Church. But this will of God’s is signified to us in another way. If, in sacramental marriage, the mutual donation and acceptance of the spouses signifies the “ moral” union of Christ with our souls, a union which though meant to be indissoluble, is nevertheless liable to dissolution by the weak­ ness of our wills, the consummation of the marriage signifies the “physical” union of the Word with human nature, which this time is so firmly sealed that it will remain undissolved for ever. This doctrine is that of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church. Thus therefore marriage is always indissoluble in its essence. In one case, that of consummated sacramental marriage, it is furthermore in­ dissoluble by any action from without. In the other cases it is not exempt from such action. But since the sacramental bond is one of divine law it must be held that God alone could intervene to dissolve it. He can declare His will cither directly by an immediate revelation like that made to Oscc (if, at least, we adopt the old exegesis); or mediately, through a human intermediary. Thus a divinely inspired declaration of St. Paul’s notifies us that a baptized spouse can break with a pagan partner who refuses to cohabit (1 Cor. vii. 12-13); and similarly the infallibly assisted declarations of the Church teach us that in other circumstances a consummated non-sacraraental marriage and a non-consummated sacramental marriage can be dissolved. In these last cases the Church merely declares with authority that by God’s intervention such a marriage (not being a consummated sacramental one) is dissolved. Her part is purely “declaratory”—the declaration acting as a necessary condition. Mill Mill 173 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE Theologians who reject this explanation affirm that the Church, besides the ecclesi­ astical jurisdiction that she exercises as properly her own, possesses a jurisdiction that she exercises as an instrumental cause, and in virtue of which she authorita­ tively looses the obligations of divine law resulting from marriage. To support their thesis they recall that when she teaches the truths of the faith the Church is already acting as an instrumental cause to bind and oblige consciences. But in proposing the truths of the faith the Church does not, strictly speaking, act as an instrumental cause to bind consciences; she simply declares, with authority, the revealed message—a message which we receive not on the authority of the Church, but on the immediate authority of God revealing, the formal object of theological faith. (5) Indulgences. The problem of the distinction between proper and instru­ mental jurisdiction arises again in connection with indulgences. They remit the temporal punishment due to sin, not merely in the ecclesiastical forum but in the divine. All theologians agree that this is not in virtue of the sacramental power. There remains the jurisdictional power. Is it done then in virtue of an instrumental jurisdiction? Jurisdiction cannot loose from the temporal punishment of sin as it looses from excommunication, from suspension, from interdict. A Parisian theologian, a disciple of Scotus, François Mairon (f 1325), fell into confusion upon this. Cajetan {Quaestiones de Thesauro Indulgentiarum, Quaesitum Primum, nos. II and III, edit, leonina, vol. XII, p. 359) replied that the forum of exterior ecclesiastical juris­ diction, to which pertain excommunication, suspension and interdict, must not be confused with the divine forum, to which pertains the temporal punishment of sin; and that if the Pope has power to loose all things in heaven and earth, it does not follow that he can loose them all in one sole manner only: in exterior matters he looses by simple ordinance, solo jussu; in interior matters he looses sacramentally if it is a question of sin (as to guilt and as to punishment) ; and also by way of interchangeability, of dispensation, drawing on the treasury of the satisfactions of Christ and His saints, if it a question of the merely temporal punish­ ment of sins already forgiven. Mairon, like Luther later on, if for quite other reasons, arrived at the same result: they both ignored the existence of a treasury of satisfactions left by Christ to the Church Militant (Denz. 550, 757, ϊΜϋ· When the Pope grants an indulgence releasing from temporal punishment it is always by way of transferability, by dispensing the treasure of the super­ abundant satisfactions of Christ and the saints (Denz. 551), wherein the faithful find the wherewithal to compensate for what is still lacking in their own good works. An indulgence is granted not by a sentence (as in excommunication) but q. 27, 2. q, 2d 3). Must ::z appeal to an instrumental jurisdiction to explain this dispensation? We think not. What is in question here is a communication, a transference of satisfactions, not of merits. Now, as St. Thomas points out, such a transference needs only a simple designation, so that here below any one of the faithful can transfer his satisfactions to any other {Suppl., q. 26, a. 1; q. 27, a. 3, ad 2). Christ and the saints have abandoned their superabundant satisfactions to the Church Militant, leaving it to her to dispense them, to apply them, that is to say to designate those to whom they are to go. It seems to us that here also this designation plays the part of a necessary condition, that it pertains to material causality, and that there is no need to Ultl Hit THE PERMANENT JURISDICTION Suppose an instrumental jurisdiction. The Church, prescribing in virtue of her proper jurisdiction the good works needed to obtain the indulgence, thereby designates the subjects of the indulgence. The living, says St. Thomas, who can do these good works, receive the indulgence directly] the dead, who cannot sub­ mit themselves to the conditions prescribed by the Church, receive it only in­ directly, by a transference to the forum of separated souls of that which we offer for them in the forum of this present life {Supply q. 71, a. io; a. 12, ad 3). That is why wc say that indulgences are given to the living by way of absolution, and to the dead by way of suffrage (cf. Cod. Jur. Can., can. 911)« If these explanations arc rejected it will be necessary to hold that the Church, in virtue of her jurisdiction, intervenes directly in the divine forum to apply the satisfactions of Christ in the manner of an instrumental cause. But if, without the sacrament of Penance, the Church can confer instrumentally the effect of the sacrament of Penance, wc should have to conclude that she possesses the ‘ power of excellence’’ which, according to St. Thomas, Jesus gave neither to His Church nor even to the Apostles. Cajetan agrees that the difficulty is serious. He replies that the Church would have the power of excellence if she thus con­ ferred the total effect of a sacrament, but not if she confers only a partial sacra­ mental effect (Quaest. de Thesauro Indulg., edit. Icon., vol. XII, quaesit, iv, nos. i and vii, pp. 362 and 363). But is it necessary to fall back on this solution? (6) Vows. A vow, a promise made to God relating to a higher good, obliges us in virtue of the natural law; and in virtue of divine positive law too: '‘If thou hast vowed anything to God, defer not to pay it; it is better not to vow than after a vow not to perform die things promised" (Eccles, v. 3-4). Yet the Church, in certain cases, dispenses from vows. Has she then, besides her proper juris­ diction, an instrumental jurisdiction exercised in God’s name? I am not thinking of the case in which the thing vowed becomes, owing to changed circumstances, manifesdy illicit. The vow, which always relates to a greater good, is then extinguished of itself. That was Jeptha’s case, who, if he sinned by imprudence in making his vow, sinned by impiety in keeping it (II-II, q. 88, a. 2, ad 2). But how explain the power of a superior to release from a vow? The answer is given by St. Thomas, Π-II, q. 88. First, on God’s part, I can vow to God only what belongs to me. If I vow anything not depending on me the vow is necessarily conditional (a. 8, ad 1). It is worth nothing if contradicted by anyone entitled to dominion over me or over the thing vowed. Thus is produced an annulment or voiding of the vow {irritatio voti). This voiding is direct when it concerns the way in which I have disposed of myself; indirect when it concerns the object of which I have disposed. There is no difficulty so far. We may add that the Church annuls vows thus when, for example, she decides in advance that vows made under certain conditions, such as fear or immature years, are invalid. We come to the dissolution of a vow by way of dispensation or commutation. Some have thought that these cases are the same as the foregoing. Every vow is conditional. It is valid to the extent, and for the period, approved by the superior. The latter, even if proceeding arbitrarily, could, we will not say licitly, but at any rate validly, suspend the vow, and the inferior may then live with clear conscience. St. Thomas rejects this thesis (a. 12, ad 2). In cases of dispensation or commutation we are concerned no longer with 175 u ? THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE conditional but with absolute vows» The circumstances moreover arc not such that it is clear to all, or to the better instructed, that they can loose the vow of themselves, as Jeptha might have done. Whenever there is total dispensation, or partial dispensation, that is to say commutation, die Church intervenes with authority to dissolve a vow that is valid and already operative. She avails herself of a jurisdictional power and not of a dominative power, as in cases of simple voiding. And because her jurisdiction was given her to edify and not to destroy, and cannot be valid cither to command sin which displeases God, or even to interdict vows that are absolute and operative, which please God, the prelate who arbitrarily, that is without just cause, releases from such vows would act not only illicitly, as above, but also invalidly (cf. a. 12, ad 2). By what right docs the Church intervene? She has a mission, say’s St. Thomas, to judge with authority as to what, in the given circumstances, is die more virtuous thing and the more agreeable to God (cf. loc. cit.). But then, to dispense with authority from a vow under the natural law or the positive divine law, should she not have an authority, at least instrumental, capable of annulling the natural or the positive divine law? No, says St. Thomas. The Church pronounces, with authority, that what has been vowed as a better good, has become, hic et nunc. cither bad, or useless, or opposed to greater things; and that the vow, on that account, has lost the quality that made it pleasing in God's sight (a. 10). In other words, just as, in the civil order, a dispensation is not directed against the law itself, but makes something which fell under the law cease to do so in some particular case—“cum dispensatur in aliqua lege humana, non fit ut legi humanae non obediatur . . . sed fit ut hoc quod erat lex non sit lex in hoc casu”— so, when the Church dispenses from a vow she authentically declares that what fell under the vow has ceased to do so, that what was matter suitable for a vow has ceased to be so. She lifts no hand against any precept of the natural or positive law; but she delimits, as to extension or duration, the obligation that flows from our human decision, which cannot weigh every thing since foresight is short: 44 Fit ut hoc quod continebatur sub voto, non contineatur, inquantum determin­ atur in hoc casu hoc non esse congruam materiam voti. Et ideo, cum praelatus Ecclesiae dispensat in voto, non dispensat in praecepto juris naturalis, vel divini; sed determinat id quod cadebat sub obligatione deliberationis humanae, quae non potuit omnia circumspicere’* (a. 10, ad 2). This delimitation, this deter­ mination, is made with authority’: “In commutatione vel dispensatione votorum requiritur praelati auctoritatis, qui in persona Dei determinat quid sit Deo acceptum ’ (a. 12). And it does not follow, for all that, says Billuart, that the vow was conditional: “Licet . . . conditio subintclligatur respectu irritantis, non tamen respectu dispensantis—nisi intelligas: quando subest justa causa dis­ pensandi” (De Voto, dissert. 4, art. 8, §5, dico 7). Thus then it is the thought of St. Thomas that the Church’s jurisdiction inter­ venes here on the plane of material causality, to determine the object of the vow. The Church makes use of the power we have called “declaratory’*’. As to solemn vows of religion, in whatever way interpreted, it is possible to explain, without appeal to any instrumental jurisdiction, how the Popes can dispense them; for example by an explanation of the type we have just employed. And if the solemnity of vows be regarded as pertaining to ecclesiastical law (“voti solemnitas ex sola constitutione Ecclesiae est inventa”, Boniface VIII), the question is so much the easier. 176 THE PERMANENT JURISDICTION Conclusions. If we are right, and have correctly understood the nature of those interventions of the Church which we have passed in review, the upshot of this note will be that it is neither necessary nor useful to appeal, as several contem­ porary theologians do, to the hypothesis of an “instrumental” jurisdiction_ a jurisdiction that would amount cither to the power of order or even to the “power of excellence", reserved in St. Thomas’s teaching for Christ alone, to the exclusion of the Church and of the Apostles themselves. The jurisdictional power of the Church does not, in my mind, intervene as a strictly instrumental cause. It always displays an initiative, either to “declare” immediately divine decisions (dog­ matic or simply infallible definitions, dispensations from vows, dissolution of certain marriages), or else to promulgate the Church’s own ecclesiastical decisions, some of which may condition the production of a divine action, whether sacra­ mental (imposing conditions of validity to sacramental marriage and conferring of Confirmation by a simple priest), or extra-sacramental (determination of the conditions of an indulgence; determination of the mode of valid election of the Sovereign Pontiff). The ultimate determination of the matter and form of certain sacraments will belong to the declaratory power. 2. THE CANONICAL OR LEGISLATIVE POWER A. The Nature I. THE CANONICAL of the POWER’S Canonical DERIVATION or Legislative Power FROM THE DECLARATORY POWER AS AN EFFECT FROM ITS CAUSE The declaratory power acts as a condition manifesting a law that is im­ mediately divine. The canonical power acts as the basis of a law that is immediately ecclesiastical or canonical, and only mediately divine. These two powers are clearly distinct. But they are not unrelated. The power of authoritatively “declaring” immediately divine decisions contains the power of “lawgiving”, of promulgating decisions that are purely ecclesiastical or canonical, as the branch contains the leaves, as the nature of bodies contains their physical properties. It is not to be thought that Christ, who entrusted to His ministers the task of founding and perpetuating the Church, left them without the powers required for the concrete execution of this design. And if we remember that the declaratory power is truly jurisdictional, charged with the task of notifying men, not merely speculatively but authoritatively, of their duty to accept the revelation and to build up together the Body of Christ, we shall easily understand that this higher jurisdictional power needs to be completed by a lower one, competent to take all the canonical measures needed to organize and rule the faithful all over the world. It is because the Church is thus qualified to take all the measures demanded for the success of her mission among men that she can be called a juridically perfect society: “The Church” says Leo XIII, “is a society juridically perfect in its kind, [societas est genere et jure perfecta'] because by the express will and loving-kind­ ness of her Founder she possesses in herself and by herself all needful provision »77 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE for her existence and action . . . For Jesus Christ gave full powers to His Apostles over sacred things, together with a truc çower of making laws, as also a two-fold right ofjudging and punishing, which flows from that power ... It is to the Church that God has assigned the charge of seeing to and legislating for all that concerns religion, of teaching all nations, of spreading the Christian faith as widely as possible; in short, of administering freely and without hindrance, in accordance with her own judgment, all matters that fall within her competence.”1 And Pius VI condemned as heretical the proposition of the Synod of Pistoia, affirming that “the use the Church makes of the power received from God and exercised by the Apostles them­ selves to keep exterior discipline, must be regarded as an abuse of her authority.”8 2. ITS EXTENSION AND PARTICULARIZATION OF THE VIRTUALITIES THAT GO TO FORM THE CHURCH If the divine influx which generates and sustains the Church passes through the visible hierarchy, if it avails itself of the sacramental and jurisdictional powers, it is not in order to organise angels but to bring men together into a visible supernatural society, to incorporate them wholly into the organism of supernatural salvation. The whole Church of to-day, the Church as a visible society, as a perfect, independent, sclf-subsistent society, as a supernatural society, is virtually contained, as in its proximate cause, in the hierarchical powers.’ First, in the power of order, which incorporates men in Christ at once by way of the sacramental character, a participation of the priesthood of Christ, and by way of sacramental grace, a participation of the inner sanctity of Christ. Second, in the power of jurisdiction (called for by the power of order) whose office it is to impart Christ's truth: primarily and principally by means of the declaratory power, divinely assisted in the strict sense; secondarily and dependently by means of the canonical or legislative power, divinely assisted also, but in a wider sense. Thus then, it is primarily by reason of the power of order and the declaratory power, not primarily by the canonical power, that the Church is built up into a visible society. But without the canonical power this visible society would never succeed in establishing itself, and would remain perpetually incomplete. The end for which this power exists is to prepare the ways whereby evangelical salvation may reach down to souls, and souls lay hold of evangelical salvation. It is divinely assisted; not, I repeat, as the declaratory power is assisted, but sufficiently to ensure that it docs not fail of its purpose. We might compare the part played in the Church by the power of order and by the declaratory power to that of the arteries in an animal body, and that of the canonical 1 Encyclical Immortale Dei, 1st Nov. 1885. ’Denz. 1504. 3 The hierarchical powers arc an extrinsic efficient cause of the Church taken as existing in the mode common to all Christians; and an intrinsic efficient cause of the Church taken as comprehend­ ing both hierarchy and faitliful. 178 - V· - THE PERMANENT JURISDICTION power, looser and more supple but none the less necessary, to that of the lesser ducts and capillary' vessels. 3- THE MANNER OF ITS REPRESENTATION IN SCRIPTURE If the declaratory power contains the canonical as a cause contains its connatural effect, it is clear that the scriptural texts that set forth the former —e.g., Jesus’ promise to give the keys to Peter, and to ratify in heaven what he should bind or loose on earth (Matt. xvi. 19), or again, the passage in which Jesus entrusts His sheep and His lambs to Peter (John xxi. 17)— must set forth the latter also, at least consequentially and by implication. So true is this that St. Matthew, having reported a phrase that is clearly indica­ tive of the canonical power of the Church, follows it up at once with another concerning the power of the Apostles to bind and loose: when the sinner will not listen, says the Saviour, “take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may stand. And if he will not hear them, tell the Church. And if he will not hear the Church, let him be to thee as the heathen and the publican.1 Amen I say to you,2 whatsoever you shall bind upon earth shall be bound also in heaven; and whatsoever you shall loose upon earth shall be loosed also in heaven” (Matt, xviii. But it must be added at once that besides texts that indicate the canonical power in its cause, there are others that mention it directly. We are shown the Apostles taking all the disciplinary and prudential measures that cir­ cumstances of place and time require. At the Council of Jerusalem they decide to impose on the Christians of Antioch abstinence from things strangled (Acts xv. 29). St. Paul wishes the incestuous Corinthian to be expelled from the Church and excommunicated (1 Cor. v. 5), and those too who refuse the law of work imposed on the children of men (2 Thess. iii. 14). He regulates procedure among the Corinthians and, for prudential reasons, forbids tem­ poral causes to be carried before pagan judges (1 Cor. vi. 1). He commands 1 “ The attitude to be taken up by the faithful towards the contumacious sinner supposes that the Church has pronounced a sentence of exclusion, the excommunication with which Jewish society was well acquainted, and which could be pronounced only by the proper authorities ” (NL-J. Lagrange, O.P., Évangile selon St, Matthieu, 1927, p. 355). 1 “ The passage from the singular to the plural is very significant. It means at least that the power is not given to every Christian . . it is entrusted to those to whom Jesus is speaking, and if they' do not represent the faithful at large, as they do when He speaks in the singular, it is therefore given to these disciples, already invested with such great powers at the opening of their mission, and destined by that very fact to be dispensers of the authority entrusted first to Peter. Jerome therefore grasped the full meaning of the text: Potestatem tribuit apostolis, ut sciant qui a talibus con­ demnantur., humanam sententiam divina sententia corroborari ” (M.-J. Lagrange, O.P., Évangile selon saint Matthieu, p. 355). The meaning of binding and loosing can be restricted to the sacramental power of absolution, as Lagrange restricts it here; but we may leave it its general significance applicable both to the sacramental and jurisdictional powers. Here is the passage from St. Jerome: “ The revolted brother might reply in secret or think in his heart: if you reject me, I reject you; if you condemn me, I condemn you. So Jesus gives His own power to the Apostles; those they condemn will know that a divine sentence ratifies the human, that all that is bound on earth will be likewise bound in Heaven ” {Comm. in Evang. Matt.; P.L. VII col. 131). I79 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE the Corinthian women to attend religious gatherings with covered heads (xi. 5). When he comes to Corinth in person he will put the rest in order (xi. 34). He organizes collections everywhere for the Church at Jerusalem (2 Cor. viii and ix). He fixes the age and qualifications of widows charged with a ministry in the Church (1 Tim. v. 9). He recommends the faithful to give temporal help to the elders who teach and preach (v. 17). Similar disciplinary measures were certainly to be necessary in later ages. Hence the Scriptures do not stop at showing us the exercise of canonical powers by the Aposdes: we may see them besides being passed on to their successors. Full spiritual powers to feed the Church of God confided to them were left by Peter and Paul to the presbyters and bishops their successors, and no halting or insufficient authority to deal with those who should sow the seeds of false doctrine (1 Peter v. 2; Acts xx. 28-30). The Epistle to the Hebrews speaks of those prelates who, having been put in charge of the faith­ ful, wiH have to render account for their souls (xiii. 17). Moreover the Churches had to take disciplinary measures even in the lifetime of the Apostles. St. Paul declares himself satisfied with the sanctions inflicted by the Church of Corinth on a certain insubordinate member, and now advises the removal of these sanctions by a second official decision (2 Cor. ii. 6-8). 4. THE WORDS “power” AND “SOCIETY ” TO BE APPLIED TO THE CHURCH AND TO THE CIVIL ORDER ANALOGICALLY AND NOT UNIVOCALLY This point is, I think, highly important. Are we to regard the Church and political society as two species of one and the same genus? Arc wc to say that it is as a visible society, and in virtue of the generic notion of a visible society, that the Church, like the State, possesses a legislative, judicial and coercive power: whereas it is as a supernatural society, and in virtue of the specific notion of a supernatural society, that she possesses the powers of order and of magisterium?1 Or should we rather consider the Church and political society as two analogical realizations of the idea of society, essentially different, and having only a likeness of proportion? If it be held, as here, that the declaratory power contains the legislative, and this latter does no more than apply, so to say, the virtue of the former, it will not be possible to split up the Church so as to distinguish in her a specific aspect, supernatural and characterized by the powers of order and infallible magisterium, and a generic aspect, natural, social and visible, and characterized—like every political society—by a legislative, a judicial, and a coercive power. On the contrary, it is precisely inasmuch as she possesses the supernatural powers of order and magisterium, that the Church is social and visible. She must be considered as an essentially supernatural society through and through, having a simple 1 Zigliara considers “ power and society as genera; and civil and religious society, and civil and religious power as the species” (Propaedeutica ad Sacram Theologiam, Rome 1903, p. 390). Billot attributes the power of government to the Church inasmuch as it resembles other human societies, and the powers of order and magisterium inasmuch as it is supernatural and differs from other societies (De Ecclesia Christi, p. 327). l8o THE PERMANENT JURISDICTION likeness of analogy and proportion to political society, not a univocal likeness, even a generic one. Because this concept of analogy is wholly absent from Joseph de Maistrc’s book Du Pape, the great truths it contains arc unfortunately mingled with serious errors. 5. IS THE CHURCH A “SOCIETY”, OR AN “INSTITUTION”, ORAN "ORGANISM”? In his book on Unity in the Church (Die Einheit in der Kirche), which ap­ peared in 1825, Mochlcr wrote; “If the Church were defined as an institu­ tion [zlnj/n//] or a society [Verein] having the maintenance and propagation of the Christian faith for her end, only one of her aspects would have been envisaged ... If we confine ourselves to calling the Church an institution we risk giving the impression that Christ merely commanded the gathering together of His own, without caring to instil into them any interior desire for union, any need to remain united ... Who says‘institution’says‘mechanism’. But the Church is a living organism.” The followers of Khomiakov, who arc only imperfectly acquainted with Mochlcr,1 likewise oppose the idea of the Church as an organism to that of the Church as a society or institution. “According to our current ideas” writes G. Samarinc, in his Préface aux oeuvres théologiques de A. S. Khomiakov, “the Church is an institution, an institution of a unique kind it is true, a divine institution, but an institution nevertheless. This conception errs, like all our current definitions and representations of the objects of faith; without directly contradicting the truth, it remains insufficient; it brings the idea down to too mundane a level, makes it too crudely familiar. It becomes involuntarily vulgarized by proximity to a group of phenomena apparently of the same kind, but really having nothing in common with her . . . One of the imprescriptible mani­ festations of the Church lies in her effective possession of a doctrine; in another of her manifestations, the historical, she makes effective contact with all other institutions as an institution of a kind apart; and yet the Church is not a doctrine, she is not a system, she is not an institution. The Church is a living organism, she is the organism of truth and of love; or, more precisely, she is truth and love as organism.” “ Institution ” means an order freely founded, and therefore also disputable and optional; “organism” is an order given by nature, profound, necessary, but ruled by the laws of biological determinism; “society” (family, city) results at once from a natural instinct and from human effort. None of these words can be applied univocally, that is without changing its meaning, to the Church. But if we take them analogically, proportionally, we may apply them all. For the Church was indeed freely instituted by the Saviour;2 ’Cf. A. Graticux, A. S. Khomiakov et le mouvement Slavophile, Paris 1939, vol. II, Les doctrines, p. 105, note !. 1 “ It was Christ Our Lord who instituted and formed the Church; and therefore, when we would know her nature, the first thing to do is to ask what it was that Christ wished and did ” (Leo XIII, Salii Cognitum, 29th June 1896). ι8ι THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE and yet her interior order is more profound and more wonderful than any work of nature. The Church is indeed an organism, the Body of Christ; and yet she is not subject to biological determinism; her inner order is spiritual, made up of truth, liberty and love. The Church is a society,1 an assembly (that is the meaning of the word Ecclesia) ; and yet she results not from any natural instinct and human effort, but from the breath of the Holy Spirit and from a liberty transformed by grace. Thus then, such words as power, institution, society, borrowed from human life, are not alone in needing transposition before being applied to the Church; the same is true of such words as organism, borrowed from vegetable and animal life. But precisely because the former notions lie nearer to us we arc the more inclined to take them univocally and the less careful to transpose them when speaking of the Church, whereas the notion of organism, coming from lower levels, is more or less instinctively given an analogical sense. That is what Khomiakov docs when he says that the Church is “truth and love as organism”. I shall not reject this definition, but try to elucidate it and make it rather more precise. 6. THE LIMITATIONS OF THE CANONICAL POWER The declaratory power is of the divine forum; the legislative or canonical power is of the ecclesiastical or canonical forum. The first manifests a law that is immediately divine. The second manifests a law that is mediately divine, but remains immediately human. It is subject, on this account, to a double limitation. First, being immediately human, it will chiefly prescribe those acts which fall normally under human observation, that is to say exterior acts. When it prescribes interior acts, this will be for the most part only indirectly and by concomitance, in so far as they are necessary for the validity, honesty and morality of the aforesaid exterior acts: the ecclesiastical law for example will recall that the minister of a sacrament should intend to confer it, that the penitent should be sorry for his sins, and that those who recite the canonical Office should be trying to pray. And indeed what exterior acts should it command save those directed to the Kingdom of God, acts which therefore ought to be valid, honest and moral? For we must never forget that although the ecclesiastical law' is immediately human, it is not in the least like the law of temporal kingdoms: it is a more detailed determination of the revealed principles of a spiritual kingdom, a kingdom of grace and of truth; so that w’hcn it prescribes exterior acts it cannot but go down to their deep spiritual roots. It follows that in order vitally to determine the direction of our practical action, it wall also prescribe our adhesion to the doctrines them­ selves whence this action is to proceed; and that in consequence we owe an assent not merely disciplinary' and exterior, but also intellectual and interior, to the doctrinal decisions proposed to us, for instance by the Roman i·»ιι 1 u The Only-begotten Son of God established on earth a society called the Church ... ** (Leo XIΠ, Immortal* Dei, ist Nov. 1885). 182 ς-ί-: THE PERMANENT JURISDICTION Congregations. The maxim De internis non judicat praetor is not to be applied simply as it stands to the canonical power. Next, being immediately human, the canonical power ought to forbid, not all bad acts, but the gravest only and those that are specially hurtful to the neighbour. And similarly, it should not attempt to prescribe all good acts, but only those most needful for the common good or those again that are more within the power of the many. For every human law, even when medi­ ately divine, is valid primarily only in the external forum, in which it would be imprudent to command all goods and forbid all evils.1 ■ I 7. THE RELATIONS OF THE DECLARATORY AND CANONICAL POWERS The declaratory power addresses itself to all men. The canonical power never bears on any but the baptized. On these it can lay new duties; and to what is already prescribed for them by the divine law—and directly affect­ ing the internal forum—it can add a new canonical obligation directly bearing only on external acts. Thus Pius IX, defining the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady, an object of divine faith, invoked the canonical penalties provided by the law against those who should outwardly deny it.1 B. The Principal Subdivisions of the Canonical ί or Legislative Power How is the canonical or legislative power to be subdivided? This too can be done from various standpoints. We may consider cither the ends immediately envisaged, or the stages to be passed through before it comes down to the concrete conduct of men, or the various matters to be regulated, or the degrees of its realization. We shall have to take account of these sub­ divisions—or at least of the first two—in order to define the type of divine assistance promised to the canonical power. I. THE “ends” OF THE CANONICAL POWER The specific end of the declaratory power is to propose the divine revelation, the primary message of the Church, authoritatively and infallibly. The specific end of the canonical pow'er is to enable the Church to take all measures required to facilitate that task. How shall we hierarchize these measures inter sei Let us first of all distinguish those that aim at the direct protection of the divine revelation in our own souls by securing a favourable orientation towards it in our habits of thought and action. These measures constitute what we may call the secondary message of the Church. It comprises two types of imperative: first those of universal application, such as the general 1 L. Billot, S.J., De Ecclesia Christi pp. 454-457. This author ho\vc%-cr docs not sufficiently indicate that the likeness between canon law and civil law is only analogical. ’Denz. 1841. 183 — —-- . I ■ I I THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE obligation to recognize the authority of the Fathers and Doctors, the law’s of the Church, the permanent provisions of her canon law and so forth; and next, imperatives of a more restricted order, relating to the application of these general laws, and to what theologians call particular facts. But there are other measures pertaining to the legislative and organiza­ tional power of the Church which must be put, I think, into a distinct group. They are not intended, like the foregoing, for the direct protection of the revelation in men’s hearts. Their end is more remote: it is rather to ensure the biological and empirical existence of the Church in the world. The Church, a spiritual and visible kingdom which, like a magnetic pole, myster­ iously attracts to herself all authentic holiness on earth, but finds her full being only there where she can exercise the sacramental and jurisdictional pow'ers willed by Christ, must work to the utmost of her power to procure the temporal and political conditions that may give free play to these divine powers and provide the material and political support for her spiritual and supra-political existence. Hence a great complex of proceedings and pro­ visions concerning her relations with political powers and with historical and cultural movements. For lack of a better term wc may call them provisions of the biological’order. Here we shall have to include all that is sometimes called—and the term can be justified—the politics of the Church, the politics of the Popes. 2. THE SUCCESSIVE “INSTANCES” OF THE CANONICAL POWER Considered under its practical and disciplinary aspect, the power wc have called canonical, legislative, organizational, must, if it is to reach out to the concrete life of men, move through several “instances” or steps. From this standpoint it is commonly divided by theologians into, first, the legislative power—this term being taken strictly for the power of making laws, of promulgating enactments binding in conscience with a view to the common good; then the judicial power, or power of authoritatively determining the meaning of laws and of judging the conduct of those who are subject to them ; and lastly the coercive power, or power to apply sanctions and to punish delinquents. In his De Romano Pontifice (Book IV, cap. xv) St. Robert Bellarmine asks himself whether the Church can make laws, judge, and punish. Having made it clear that he is thinking of the ecclesiastical power as such (and not as having any temporal power annexed to it), and that he is considering only just laws (for unjust laws, e.g., any law compelling infants and the sick to fast in Lent, or forbidding the episcopate to the poor or to those of humble birth, are not really laws at all), he replies: “It has always been held in the Church that the bishops in their own dioceses and the Roman Pontiff in the whole Church, are true ecclesiastical princes, competent of their own authority, and without asking for the consent of the people or the advice of the priests, to make laws binding in conscience, to judge ecclesiastical causes as other judges do, and finally to punish their transgressors.” The scriptural 184 THE PERMANENT JURISDICTION and patristic texts which he adds in the following chapter of his work, aim at simultaneously establishing these three points; for it is important to insist that wc are here in the presence, not of three specifically distinct powers, but of three successive instances of one and the same power, for the power of lawgiving, i.e. of effectually and authoritatively directing a multitude to its proper good, must needs include those of judging and of punishing.1 Wc may easily verify the presence of this distinction in the recent docu­ ments of the magisterium. Thus, on the 28th August 1794, Pius VI con­ demned “as leading to a system already condemned as heretical” the fifth proposition of the Synod of Pistoia stating that the Church “has not received from God this power which, not content with advising and persuading, goes on to make laws, and then to constrain the rebellious by exterior judgments, and by salutary punishments.”2 Here we recognize the division of the Church’s power into legislative, judiciary and coercive. The same three-fold division is indicated by Leo XIII in the Encyclical Immortale Dei, of the 1st Nov. 1885: “Jesus Christ gave to his Apostles unrestrained authority in regard to things sacred, together with the genuine and most true power of making laws, as also the twofold right of judging and of punishing, which flows from that power.” Although the canonical power resembles the temporal power of the State in being divided into legislative, judicial and coercive functions, it must be carefully noted that these three words are not to be taken in an identical or univocal sense in the two cases, but in a proportional and analogical sense. “The civil power, ” writes John of St. Thomas, “being ordered to a temporal and natural end, namely to the political good of the republic, it follows that the penalties and rewards and other means by which men are directed to their temporal end are themselves of the temporal order. The ecclesiastical power however is ordained to the supernatural end; and so also the rewards and penalties and all other means directing men to that end are spiritual and supernatural [if not in themselves, at least in their aim]. Consequently ecclesiastical penalties are always spiritual, not doubtless in the sense in which ‘spiritual’ is opposed to ‘corporeal’, but in the sense in which ‘spiritual’ is a synonym of the supernatural and opposed to the natural. To be super­ natural, the measures taken by the Church can be just as well material as immaterial. That is why all such things as external acts involved in the administration or reception of the sacraments, benefices and ecclesiastical offices, arc spiritual and supernatural. And indeed even when the ecclesiasti­ cal power touches temporal things it is always with spiritual things in view”3 —and because what was hitherto temporal has thus become spiritual, it now 1 Against Montesquieu, who attributes the legislative and judicial powers to distinct juridical principles, Zigliara remarks that if it is prudent in practice to entrust the exercise of legislative, executive, judicial and coercive functions to different hands, that should not tempt us to overlook their essential connection {Summa Philosophica, Paris 1895, vol. Ill, Jus Saturae, lib. II, cap. ii, a. 5 and 6, pp. 234 and 245). 1 Dcnz., 1505. 1 Π-II, q. 64, disp. 12, a. 1; vol. VII, p. 513. 185 t iim ; I - THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE concerns the salvation of souls.1 And the Encyclical Immortale Dei forcibly distinguishes the essence of the civil power from that of the ecclesiastical power: the one looks to human interests, the other to divine; the one procures perishable goods, the other heavenly and eternal goods, pertaining to the salvation of souls; the one is temporal, the other is supernatural and spiritual. 3. THE "matters” ENVISAGED BY THE CANONICAL POWER a. The canonical power, always spiritual by reason of its ends, may be exercised on a matter which is normally spiritual by nature, whether this matter be wholly and solely spiritual (disciplinary measures regulating the conduct of clerics, religious, laymen, the prudent administration of the sacraments and sacramentals, the practice of fasting and abstinence, the celebration of feasts and so forth), or only partially spiritual, or mixed2 (effects of marriage, which are partly religious, partly civil, scholastic teach­ ing aimed at producing both Christians and citizens). The canonical power may also be exercised on matters usually civil, but become spiritual hie el nunc, by way of exception, on occasion; forbidding for example the citizens of a particular country to use their right to vote, as has recently happened? Then again the Church intervenes under the special heading of defence of the altars; this is "the politics of the altar”, and she herself takes the initiative in the political action or refusal of action? To this activity of the Church belongs what has been called “civic Catholic action”, an extension of Catholic action, intervening in political matters to defend the “values proper to the City of God”, the “authentically religious interests as determined hie el nunc by the Holy See and by the episcopate”? Clearly we are here in the presence not of two powers but of a single spiritual 1 The things called spiritual in speculative theology are divided by the canonists into things spiritual (spirituale) such as grace and the virtues, and things annexed {spirituali annexum), such as rites, feasts, ecclesiastical benefices {Codex Juris Canardci, can. 1553, § 1, 1). 1 The word is used by Leo XIII, who protests in this connection in the Immortale Dei, against the usurpation of governments: “ De ipsis rebus, quae sunt mixti juris, per se statuunt gubernatores rei civilis arbitratu suo, in eoque genere sanctissimas Ecclesiae leges superbe contemnunt. Quare ad jurisdictionem suam trahunt matrimonia Christianorum, decernendo etiam de maritali vinculo, de unitate, de stabilitate conjugii.” ’ Pius IX and Leo XIII absolutely ferbade Italian Catholics to take part in the political elections. ‘J. Maritain, Questions de conscience, 1938, p. 189, note 1. The author remarks that here we have the first application of the passage of the Encyclical Pascendi condemning the error which declares that “ ever)’ Catholic, because he is also a citizen, has the right and the duty, without considering the authority of the Church, without taking her wishes, counsels, commandments into account, and even despising her reprimands, to seek, the public good in whatever manner he considers best ” (Denz., 2092). There is another application of the same passage which we shall deal with farther on, when the Church intervenes “ solely for the formation of the moral consciences of the citizens, by reminding them of the rules of conduct they should follow’. Then we have an act of the religious authority which, in itself, is purely spiritual, leasing the initiative and practical decision, die judicium praeticum bearing on the political act, to the conscience of the citizens thus instructed”. In the first case the intervention of the Church is the modem form of the potestas indirecta in temporalibus, ratione peccati, cf. infra, p. 209, n. 2. * ibid. pp. 184 and 194. The expression “ civic Catholic action ” is here taken in its strict sense to designate not the whole sphere of Christian political action, but only the occasional entries of the spiritual into politics, cf. infra, p. 199, ru 1. 186 THE PERMANENT JURISDICTION power bearing on things that arc spiritual whether ordinarily, by their very nature (if you like, “directly”), or exceptionally, on occasion (if you like, “indirectly”). Is it then pcrmissable, in order to characterize these two types of Church intervention, to avail ourselves of the well-known distinction between the “direct power” and the “indirect power”? That, I think, is bound to lead to confusion. It seems preferable to speak of a single power, concerning itself with matters which arc cither ordinarily spiritual or incidentally spiritual. The distinction between the “direct power” and the “indirect power" will then serve to characterize two kinds of interventions of the Church which I regard as formally distinct. b. From another point of view, but always in respect of the matters on which it bears, the canonical power can be divided into a speculative power and a practical power; or, rather differently, into a magisterial power and a disciplinary power. These last divisions, which affect the entire jurisdictional power, whether declaratory or canonical, will be dealt with further on. 4. THE “DEGREES OF REALIZATION” OF THE CANONICAL POWER On the natural plane the preceptive or legislative power is subdivided, according to the degrees of its realization, into political power, also called the power of jurisdiction, which looks to the good of the perfect community, of the city; and the economic power, also called the dominative power, which looks to the good of the imperfect community, of the family: the power of the father over his sons, of the husband over his wife, of the master over the servant.1 If we now transpose this division to the supernatural plane, on which all authority descends from the Sovereign Pontiff, it can be said that the canonical jurisdiction, taken in its widest sense, subdivides into, first, the spiritual power ofjurisdiction in the strict sense, relating to the universal Church considered either in itself or in its parts, i.e., the local Churches; and then a spiritual dominative power representing the normal power of superiors of religious communities over their subjects.2 Female religious superiors, who cannot receive the sacrament of Order, have no jurisdiction in the strict sense; but they have a spiritual dominative power, which is a form of jurisdiction com­ ing from Christ, and imparted by the Sovereign Pontiff.3 5. TABLE OF THE DIVISIONS OF THE CANONICAL POWER The end of the declaratory power is to propose the divine revelation infallibly. 1 Suarez, De Ιλgibus, lib. I, cap. viii, nos. 4 and 5. 5 Cod. Jut. Can., can. 501, §1, cf. infra, p. 603, n. 2. 3 “ Mulier non habet neque elavem ordinis nec elavem jurisdictionis. Sed mulieri commititur aliquis usus clavium, sicut habere correptionem in subditas mulieres’ (St. Thomas, ir. Seni., d. 19, Q. i, Quaest 3, ad 4. 187 » THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE (of the universal order I to protect the revelation its ends r by imperatives I of the particular order which are . to assure the empirical existence of the Church its instances The canonical power is divided according the legislative power the judiciary’ power the coercive power f wholly normally (partially (mixed matters) "which are spiritual [occasionally its matters i Ç either I which are J its degrees of realization tor strict jurisdictional power peculadve or jractical E /magisterial or disciplinary dominative power Before leaving this first division of the permanent jurisdiction into the declaratory’ power and the canonical power, I shall have to devote a long chapter to the study of the canonical power considered both in its relations with the temporal order and in its coercive form. The questions wc shall discuss arc important, although secondary as we shall realise if we recall the subordinate part played by the canonical power as compared with the declara­ tory power. Nevertheless—or perhaps partly for this reason—these are some of the most debated questions within the Church, and they excite strong feelings outside. EXCURSUS E THE ACCUSATION OF LEGALISM MADE BY THE ORTHODOX (i) There is something tragic, writes Fr. Tyszkiewicz, SJ.,1 in the attitude ° the Orthodox theology’, which shows such a longing for an all-embracing charity, yet theoretically overlooks one of the indispensable factors in the re­ alization of the full life of charity, namely a canonical organization of a divine character. 1 La théologie moehléricnne de Vuniti et les théologiens pravoslavs,” in L'Église est une ù ΜκΙύσ. Paris 1939, p. 280. 188 THE PERMANENT JURISDICTION Some light can be thrown on this question from an ecclcsiological standpoint by showing, as wc have just done, that the declaratory power, necessary for the full development of theological life, contains the canonical power as a cause contains its connatural effect; and by showing how the New Testament itself bears witness to these two jurisdictional powers, so inadequately distinguished by Orthodox theology, to which nevertheless correspond things so different as theological faith and filial obedience. Fr. Tyszkiewicz takes up the same problem from the spiritual standpoint, by showing that charity flourishes only in the soil of obedience: “The fact is that all Christian spirituality, both Catholic and Orthodox, rests always on these three fundamental virtues: humility, as an absolutely indispensable condition for receiving God’s help; charity, as the soul of all holiness; and obedience, as the sovereign means for realizing all virtues and giving them consistence, since the mere upsurge of a sterile vcllcity is no true embodiment of charity. That is why the great ascetics of primitive oriental Christianity, St. John Climacus for example (Scale, IV, 3, 4), already taught that wc must obey like ‘a living corpse’. Obedience always played a capital part in the lives of the true Russian Orthodox saints. Without obedience to men as instruments of God, there can be no Christian life, no life in the Church, no union of hearts in charity.”1 (2) That the rôle of the moral virtue of obedience in the Christian life is capital is written on every page of the Gospel and of the Fathers of the Church. We can put this more precisely by distinguishing several forms of obedience. They range from that noted by Pascal and consisting in submission to circum­ stances—“If God Himself gave us our masters we should obey with a ready heart: now these masters are to be found in necessity and in events’’—to that which consists in submission to human persons considered as God's ambassadors or representatives: first on the natural plane, where we find for example the authority of the father in the family and of the State in society; and then on the supernatural plane, where wc find the authority of the director of conscience, the paternal or “dominative” power of superiors in religious families, and the strictly jurisdictional authority of the hierarchy throughout the Church. The various forms of obedience corresponding to these various authorities, all enter on due occasion into the web of Christian fife. Moreover wc should never lose sight of the greatness of obedience. We should underestimate it, writes Dom G. Morin, if we looked only at its negative side, considering it simply “as an indispensable condition of the existence and develop­ ment of every religious society”, since “ the individual, drawn to this society by a stirring of piety, must submit to its laws to form a part of it, and must do nothing to hinder its normal activities”. St. Benedict, on the contrary, spoke of the obedientiae bonum, to be sought above all else on entering the monastery; the feeling of the religious for his abbot is to be “a genuine desire, a sort of respect as for Christ Himself, something like that which must have been felt by the first Christians after the Lord’s ascension. Hearing the Apostles speak of their Master, must they not have cried out: Oh, if wc had only lived with Him, if wc had ourselves received His commands from His own mouth, what joy, what honour for us it would have been to obey Him in the least things ! How then, Paul would answer, know you not that Christ speaks in me, loquitur in me Christus? (2 Cor. xiii. 3). Now it is not only in Paul, nor in the other Apostles, that Christ speaks, but in 1 p. 284. 189 Seiv : THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE all their legitimate successors, in all accredited pastors, according to their place in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. It is to all of these that Jesus said: Whoso heareth jout htardh me1' (Luke x. 16).1 Finally, to say that obedience should be virtuous is to say that it should be far-seeing, not inconsiderate, prudent, not servile and mechanical; and if we can praise the kind of obedience called “blind ”, it is exclusively that which goes forward in the transluminous light of faith, more indubitable than all the evidences of one’s own judgment. If we hold to these precisions, and to the singular privileges that issue from the jurisdictional power, declaratory’ as well as canonical, of the Sovereign Pontiff, we can say with Fr. Tyszkiewicz, that since the starkhestvo—that is, the practice of allowing oneself to be guided in one's inner life by a holy director, expert in the traditional spirituality’, to be obeyed without hesitation even in matters of doctrine—is the basis of all the old Orthodox spirituality, the Russian thinker Constantin Leonticff was right “to see in the Papacy the fulfilment and fullness of a very Orthodox and traditional principle; for him, the Pope is the staretz Startsev, the director of the consciences of directors of conscience, to whom com­ plete obedience is due precisely because obedience to a legitimate authority is the motive power of the inner life, and makes us capable of receiving the grace of the Holy Spirit, the soul of the Church.”3 (3) Tyranny and servitude may be properly opposed to liberty. But it is always an error to oppose authority and obedience to liberty. The correlative notions of authority and obedience are found -again, transposed, on the supernatural plane which is the plane of liberty par excellence. To the authority that declares an object of faith, revealed by the infinite authority’ of the First Truth, corres­ ponds the “obedience" of theological faith; to the canonical authority corresponds another species of obedience, pertaining to filial piety and the infused moral virtues. Both these “obediences’ liberate; the one from the limitations of human reason, the other from the limitations of the egocentric and individualistic life. Fr. Tyszkiewicz perceives that “amongst the modern Orthodox theologians the view predominates, propagated especially by Khomiakov and Dostoïevski, that in matters of faith and the supernatural life authority and liberty are mutually exclusive ideas; and since liberty, as appears above all in the Epistles of St. Paul, 1 L'id/al monastique it la nr chrétienne des premiers jours, 2nd cd., Paris !914, p. 34. cf. p. 38: “ In Simon there was the weak and mortal man, the timid Galilean who trembled at the voice of the maidservant, and there was the prodaimer of the divinity of Christ, the confirmer of his brethren, the supreme shepherd of all the lambs and sheep. And in every parish priest there is the man who is weak as we are, sinful as we are, lacking this or that quality even more perhaps than we do. But with this we have nothing to do; it disappears, blotted out by the light that on the day of his election shone from Christ's countenance upon his. Our faith should look at him thus trans­ figured. Otherwise it will not take us long to fall out even with the most accomplished head of the community; for, once more, man is always man, nothing to be very proud of, omnis homo mendax.” These words recall the doctrine of the Cautelas : Let the second caution be that thou never con­ sider thy superior as less than if he were God, be the superior who he may, for to thee he stands in the place of God . . . Keep thyself therefore with great vigilance from considering his character, his w*ays or his habits or any of his other characteristics, for, if thou do this, thou wilt do thyself the harm of exchanging divine obedience for human, by being moved, or not being moved, only by the visible characteristics of thy superior, instead of by the invisible God whom thou servest in his person ” (Cautions in Complete Works of St, John of the Cross, ed. A. Peers, London 1943, v°k ΙΠ, p. 224). Hoc. at., pp. 289 and 279. 19° THE PERMANENT JURISDICTION is of the essence of Christianity, authority ought to be abolished. For them, liberty is more especially divine life, creative spirit, spontaneity, joy in the Holy Spirit; whereas the idea of authority necessarily involves a reign of servile passivity, of narrowness, of spiritual death.” It suffices to reply, with the author: “It is clear enough that submission to an illegitimate authority, especially when this submission is inspired by interested motives, whether individual or collective, would prejudice the spiritual life, paralyse faith, kill supernatural joy, arrest the movement to God; we still feel to-day the disastrous effects of the various Cacsaropapisms, eastern and western. But Christian submission to a hierarchy willed by Jesus Christ is not to be judged by die results of subordination to a usurping authority. Obedience to men inasmuch as they are instruments of the will of God in matters of religion, attaches the faithful to God who is the source of all liberty, of all life, of all joy, of all spontaneity. This positive obedience is the potent lever of our liberty, the indis­ pensable condition of the true spiritual life.”1 Moreover we can add with the same author that there are few ways of escaping from the authentic canonical power without, in practice, falling into the hands of tyrannical and unwarranted jurisdictions. “A juridico-canonical system, organically perfect, healthy and solid, is the best assurance against the pene­ tration of canonicism into the interior life of the Church. We cannot too strongly insist on it: Catholicism, precisely in virtue of its strong canonical co-ordination, preserves the supernatural sobornostj against the untimely invasions of legalism. What the Orthodox theologians so deeply fear, the ‘Vatican’ with all its precise juridical apparatus, is a solid dyke against the unchained floods of an undis­ ciplined legalism’, such as arise when no authority exists able to put an end to the interminable polemics on the rights of such and such a particular Church, or such and such a social element within the Church: we know how prejudicial these polemics arc to charity, to the sobornostj. What might be called unilcgalism tempers the paralysing action of centrifugal and desiccating multilegalisms. It is the lack of juridical precision that gives rise to most of the conflicts which bring disaster on the organic universality of Christian charity.”2 Orthodoxy· suffers from a hypertrophy of legalism. “In Catholicism, one alone is infallible in virtue of his office, and within the strict limits laid down by the Vatican Council, without prejudice to the infallibility bestowed on the Church as a whole: whereas else­ where, the guardian of the faith being nonexistent or replaced by a ‘general consent of all ', ineffectual because too abstract, each group of Christians, national, international or other, tends to arrogate to itself, in fact if not in theory, the right to be the authentic interpreter of the Church, and more or less consciously requires all Christendom to submit to its decrees. An assurance of its own infallibility, or that of its milieu, often makes itself painfully felt in certain Orthodox theological works. That is what V. V. Rosanoff, Orthodox himself, and the enfant terrible of modern Russian religious thought, has strongly emphasised in his famous book Près des murs de l'Église.”* (4) Fr. Tyszkiewicz believes in an authentic Orthodoxy. It was that which existed “during the period when, while retaining its character as an oriental Christianity, it formed an integral part of the Catholic Church.”4 Freed from the paralysing protection of the Caesaropapist state it tends to-day “to purify itself and flourish religiously. In the persons of its noblest representatives it achieves 1 p. 287. 3 p. 281. 1 p. 283. 191 4p. 290. THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE a better understanding of itself and of the great rôle that God has in store for it in the Christian future. It seeks, gropingly, no doubt, the sources of the religious dynamism of the great Doctors of the Church; it aspires to find in itself and in the rich Eastern religious traditions, a renewal of life, of liberty, of action on man­ kind.”1 Will it overcome the temptation to prefer a mechanical or “photo­ graphic” fidelity to the ancient Church to a genuine and organic fidelity? If it docs, the Catholic Church will seem in its eyes to be “ the Christian confession in which arc organically and vitally continued the ancient general movement of the Church, the ancient progressive march of dogmatization (as certain Orthodox writers say), and the old reactions of the Flavians, the Cyrils of Alexandria, or the Theodore Studitcs against the dangerous paths of an interested separatism.”2 The accord will form around the great Catholic principle in these matters, namely “the plenitude of brotherly life in Jesus Christ, maintained by the full use of all the means willed by the head of the Church for the fulfilment of charity.”3 We too, on our side, shall have to allow ourselves to be always more and more perfectly subjected to our Church, which is divine. “We are, alas, too little Catholic, too narrow, too exclusively attached to the culture of the West in general, to our paltry national prerogatives and pretended Latin superiorities.”4 Furthermore those who work for union with the Orientals should more closely assimilate—doubtless after all the needful purifications and completions—all that is healthy, positive, living and creative in the Orthodoxy of to-day. For “would it not be a crime to refuse to cultivate the riches of Orthodox moral theology’, also of the Russian ascetic, liturgical and pastoral theology’, with all that careful solicitude which the spirit of the Catholic Church demands? Could we not communicate to our oriental enterprises some of that fragrance of the Gospel beatitudes which is so characteristic of the high Russian piety and whose spiritual charm is unmatched elsewhere in the world?”5 1 p. 291. ’ p. 289. 3p. 291. 192 * p. 290. p. 294. THE RELATIONS OF THE CANONICAL POWER AND THE POLITICAL POWER Before passing on to the other great divisions of the jurisdictional power we must linger a while longer over the study of the canonical power. If the declaratory power is the higher, the canonical power, which brings it into immediate touch with temporal things, is the more deeply affected by their complexity and contingence. The documents of the ecclesiastical magisterium that rule its exercise have, in every age, to reckon with the contemporary state of cultural development. The field of its influence is therefore variable; sometimes, as in the early Christian era, it seems to keep itself well within its legitimate frontiers, and at others, as in the Middle Ages, it appears to over­ step them. We must first define its essential exigencies, and determine the nature of its relations with political power and political society. That, however, will not suffice. We shall still have to discuss, endless as the task may seem to be, the legitimacy of many measures taken by the medieval Popes in the name of their powers, measures that find mention in the canonical collections and were then turned to account in the theological Summae: transference of the Imperial dignity, deposition of apostate princes, suppression of heresy, organization of Crusades. If we maintain that these measures were justified, there seems to be a danger that those who thus work to save the full authority of the canonical power entertain the secret hope that one day all its medieval applications will be revived. And if, on the contrary, we disavow these measures, and consider them to have been usurpa­ tions on the part of the spiritual power, it seems as if we shall have to agree that in thus falling in with the methods of the kingdoms of this world the Church lost sight of her transcendence, yielded to the third temptation rejected by Our Lord, allowed her sanctity to be eclipsed during long cen­ turies and, by ambition, weakness or ignorance, betrayed the mission that Christ had entrusted to her. Neither the theologian who simply asserts the divine character of the canonical power, nor the historian content to plead extenuating circumstances for an attitude he admits to be regrettable, will ever resolve these grave questions. Let us make an attempt to resolve them on their own merits. We shall in the first place recall (i) the analogical character of the canonical jurisdiction. I shall indicate (2) the essential claims of the Church in her relations with the State. Then (3) we shall set out to describe the normal rôle of the Church in a secular Christendom. 193 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE And finally (4) we shall discuss more at length the rôle of the Church in medieval Christendom. I. THE ANALOGICAL CHARACTER OF THE CANONICAL JURISDICTION i. THE CHURCH'S LIKENESS TO CIVIL SOCIETE ANALOGICAL ONLE Since the Church has no other end titan eternal life and union with the divine Persons, we have refused to distinguish in her first, a specific element by reason of which she is supernatural and possesses the powers of order and magisterium, and then a generic element by reason of which she is social and visible, possessing like other societies the power of legislating, judging and punishing. The Church is, at once and through and through, both super­ natural and visible: first by reason of the power of order and the declaratory power, next by reason of her canonical power which contains the legislative, judicial, and coercive powers within itself. Her resemblance to political societies is analogical only, not univocal. Hence the resemblance of her canonical power to the political power is also only analogical; and that of her legislative, judiciary and coercive powers to the legislative, judiciary, and coercive powers of the State, is merely analogical likewise. 2. THE ORIGINAL CHARACTERS OF THE CANONICAL PO WER It follows, as I have already pointed out, that the canonical power can propose even speculative and doctrinal statements to the faithful, who will then be bound to give them an intellectual assent; that if it more especially governs exterior acts, it can nevertheless prescribe the interior acts of faith and religion that should lie behind them; and that the maxim De intends non judical praetor is not to be applied to the canonical domain simply as it stands.1 It further results that the means of coercion open to the Church to bring her rebellious children back into the ways of obedience and love will not be identical with those used by the temporal society. Since the Church is a society which is not of this world, a spiritual society, ecclesiastical penalties will be always spiritual by reason of their end. But since the Church is a society which is in this world, a visible society, she can touch delinquents in their visible, temporal and material goods; but, even then, such penalties, remaining spiritual in aim, will be distinct from those inflicted by civil 1 Emmanuel Mourner remarks aptly: “ When applied to the Church and to the State (and other human powers) respectively, the word αηώαπζχ, contrary to Bakunin’s view, denotes things essen­ tially distinct, merely analogous, with an analogy of proportionality, since the ends and origins of the said authorities are supernatural in the one case and natural in the other. An orthodoxy, or an orthopraxy implying an orthodoxy, imposed by an exclusively temporal power, are altogether intolerable things” (“Anarchie et personnalisme ”, Esprit, xst April 1937, p. 141). CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER society. They will have another measure; they will be lighter and will not, for example, go as far as the shedding of blood and the death penalty. The same remarks apply to the means of extending and defending the Church. The sole means of conquest proper to the Church as such, is the preaching (and living) of the Gospel; neither constraint nor war is allowable here. The sole means of defence proper to the Church as such, and arising from her nature as the visible Kingdom of God among men, remain spiritual in measure and aim, even when temporal in themselves. They do not con­ sist in opposing blade to blade, bloody constraint to bloody constraint: “Behold, I send you forth as sheep among wolves” (Matt. x. 16); so that if the Church still exists in the world, if the sheep still live in the midst of wolves, the thing is clearly a miracle.1 The only bloodshedding for which the Church, as such, takes the full and immediate responsibility is that of the martyr. “Then they came up and laid hands on Jesus, and held him. And behold one of them that were with Jesus, stretching forth his hand, drew out his sword ; and striking the servant of the High Priest, cut off his ear. Then Jesus saith to him: Put up again thy sword into its place; for all that take the sword shall perish by the sword” (Matt. xxvi. 50-52). And wc are clearly warned that what applies to Jesus Himself applies to all His Kingdom : “ My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would certainly strive that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now”—since they have not done so it is clear that—“my kingdom is not from hence.” (John xviii. 36). Yet Popes have issued decrees for setting holy wars on foot, and for com­ pelling princes to hunt down heresy, and I believe that they did so legitimately. But what I propose to dispute is that they did so in virtue only of their canonical power, and of essential and permanent exigencies of the Kingdom of God. 5. THE ACTION OF THE CANONICAL POWER IMMEDIATE OR MEDIATE A further remark. When we speak of the means adopted by the legisla­ tive, judiciary and coercive powers of the Church, we speak first, of course, of those means which she wields herself, without having recourse to any intermediary. But we include further certain activities exerted through the medium of the secular arm·, not all such activities indiscriminately, but those only for which the ecclesiastical power can and ought to bear the full responsibility, those whose immediate end is the spiritual not the temporalChristian, Christianity and not Christendom, activities regulated by the laws of the Church and not by the laws of the State. The secular power is then functioning as a pure instrument of the canonical power. Its activity, 1 On this text of Matthew's, sec the Commentary of St. John Chrysostom, Homil. 33, P.G. LVII, col. 389: “ Let us therefore blush when we ourselves perversely become wolves to our foes. While we remain sheep wc have the victory; and even if myriads of wolves surround us we arc the stronger. As soon as we become wolves wc arc beaten. The Shepherd leaves us. He feeds sheep, not wolves. He turns away from you and goes. You xvill not allow Him to make His power seen.” x 95 va THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE ordinarily civil, becomes spiritual hic et nunc, exceptionally, on special occasion; it submerges itself in the activity of the canonical power, changes its character, becomes lighter and more moderate. On that account, the secular arm has to renounce the use of the sword. St. Augustine docs not refuse its services to deal with the Donatists, but he “would not hear of capital punishment; he trembled lest the blood of the enemies of the Church should flow back upon her and dishonour her.”1 The Church is the party responsible for these activities, not the secular power: they arc here regarded as pertaining to her “direct power”. I shall reserve the term “indirect power” for another usc.s IL THE ESSENTIAL CLAIMS OF THE CHURCH IN HER RELATIONS WITH THE STATE The claims of the Church with respect to the State concern on the one hand the life of the Church herself, and on the other her influence on the State. The Church has first of all the right and the duty to take root, live rara and develop in the bosom of political societies. She has moreover the right and the duty to exert a sanctifying influence on the life of political societies. Both kinds of claim are put forward by Leo XIII in the Encyclical Sapientiae Christianae (loth January 1890): ‘*The Church cannot be indifferent as to the particular laws which shall rule cities, since it happens only too often that instead of keeping to the political sphere these laws transgress their due limits and encroach on ecclesiastical rights. Now' God has entrusted the Church with the duty, first of opposing political measures harmful to religion; and secondly, of bringing all her zeal to bear to ensure that the laws and institutions of peoples should be penetrated with the spirit of the Gospel.” Let us consider, briefly, each of these claims. I. THE CHURCH'S NEED TO SAFEGUARD HER O WN EXISTENCE: DEFENCE OF THE SPIRITUAL ORDER However great their diversity the Kingdom of God and tire kingdoms of this world meet on the same territories, not to say in the same men, and claim them for their respective ends. How are we to conceive this partition—first within the man himself, and then among his worldly and temporal goods? A. Man’s Twofold Motion Towards God: Through Community and the Temporal Through the Spiritual Community The law of all created natures, be they physical particles or living germs, is to tend towards their act, their end, their perfection, their good. This good is a distant likeness of the divine good; and so, in tending to their own per­ fection they arc also tending blindly—and of course with numberless failures 1 P. Batiffol, Le catholicisme de saint Augustin, 1920, p. 335. » cf. below, p. 260. CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER —to God. Now if this is so, then man, who is not exempt from the general law, ought likewise to be constantly moving towards his end and his good, that is towards God, in a truly human way, in which the failures will take on the nature of sins.1 In moving in this properly human manner towards the fulfilment and fullness of his nature, man will find himself bound to enter into relations with other persons and to live a communal life; first of all in the basic community of the family, which is ordained for the handing on of life, and is itself involved in civil communities, wider, more perfect, more “divine”, ordered to the unfolding and flowering of human life2—communi­ ties whose influence will penetrate the family community and lift it gradually above itself. The supreme civil community alone will have full moral per­ sonality, will be perfect; not in the sense that it can isolate itself from all others and tend to some impossible autarchy, but in the sense that it can treat with the others as an equal with equals. At each step of this progressive introduction to community life man is moving towards God. And yet the human person is too noble a thing to be wholly received into and absorbed by a community. It is but a part of himself that moves towards God by way of the family, and another part by the various civil communities; and there remains an clement in him that can move towards God only directly, that concerns no one but God and himself. That is why St. Thomas dis­ tinguishes three parts in moral philosophy: first the “monastic” which rules the activity of man in his singleness; then the “economic” which rules the activity of the domestic community; and then “politics” which rules the activity of the civil community.3 He writes elsewhere that the good of man as man, which consists in the knowledge of truth and the regulation of the lower appetites, is distinct from the good of man as citizen, which consists in social intercourse; that the virtue that makes a good man is distinct from the virtue that makes a good citizen.4 Thus the community has its rights over the man, and its place on the road by which he moves towards God (and there we have the part given over to Caesar, although for God’s sake) ; yet it must never become totalitarian, never wholly absorb the man, in whom is an irreducible greatness, mysterious and referable immediately to God, on which the civil community has no right to lay hands (and there we have God’s exclusive part) : and it is inasmuch as it protects the mystery of the independence of the human person that private property too becomes inviolable. “The man,” says St. Thomas, “is not ordained to the political community according to all that he is or has. . . . But all that man is, all that he does, all that he has, ought to be referred to God.”5 Without even 1 “ All things, by desiring their own perfection, desire God Himself; inasmuch as the perfections of all things arc so many similitudes of the divine essence. Of those things that seek God some know Him as He is in Himself, and this belongs to the rational creature ” (St. Thomas, I, q. 6, a. i, ad 2). ’St. Thomas, Ethic, ad Nic., lib. J, Icct. 1. 3 ibid. 4 D' Virtutibus in Communi, a. 9. 5I—II» q. 21, a. 4, ad 3. The “ difference of level between the plane on which man lives his personal life and the plane he occupies as part of a social body . . . explains why personality seeks social life and tends always to travel beyond it.” From the society of the family he passes to civil I97 1 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE quitting the plane of philosophy it thus becomes evident that the civil com­ munity is of itself unfitted to rule the entire being of the men it brings together; it rules only their life as citizens and the inner reserves of their nature lie beyond its grasp. It is precisely in virtue of this part of themselves, the part that remains inaccessible to the civil community and by which they are capable of God by grace,1 that men are called to enter into a higher community. whom the State, on account of The same men, composed of soul and their natural capacities, claims for civil life, are claimed by the Church, on account of a more inward obediential capacity, for the life of the heavenly city, the life “of this Jerusalem, whose Prince is God, whose citizens are the angels and all the saints whether reigning in glory in their fatherland or still pilgrims on earth, according to the word of the Apostle [Eph. ii. 19]: ‘You are fellow citizens with the saints, and the domestics of God s It is a supernatural city which Christ has begun to gather up around Himself and incorporate into His own Body, a visible extension of His being, of which He remains to-day the Head though He is ascended into Heaven and cannot corporeally touch our miseries (save under the eucharistie veils). He now continues by way of the sacramental power (made visible by the sacraments that confer it)* to endow it with the life of grace and the infused virtues: “for, that man should be a member of this City his nature does not suffice, it needs to be elevated by God’s grace; and it is clear that the virtues that arc in man inasmuch as he is a member of that City, cannot be acquired by his natural powers. Wherefore they are not caused in us by our own acts but infused into us by the divine gift."* .And He continues by the jurisdic­ tional power (also made visible by reason of the designation that confers it) to dispense the truth that nourishes its contemplation and directs its action. Of the two forms of the jurisdictional power it is the second, the canonical, that most often comes in contact with the political power. It takes the necessary regular disciplinary measures concerning matters of a spiritual*14 society, and in the heart of civil society “ he feels the need of clubs and fellowships that will interest his intellectual and moral life. These he enters of his own free choice and they assist the soul in its efforts to ascend to a higher level. In the end these also fail to satisfy and they cramp the soul which is obliged to pass beyond them. Above the level of civil society’ man crosses the threshold of supernatural reality and enters a society which is the mystical body of an incarnate God, and whose office is to lead him to his spiritual perfection and to full liberty of autonomy and eternal welfare ” (Jacques Maritam, Freedom in the Modern World, trzns, R. O'Sullivan, K.C., London 1935, p. 51)· 1 The human soul is “ by its nature capable of grace; from the sole fact that it was created in the image of God it is capable of God by grace, as Augustine says ” (St. Thomas, I-Π, q. 113, a. to), cf. St. Augustine, De Trinitate, lib. XIV’, 12: “ Eo quippe ipso imago cjus est, quo ejus capax est . . 1 St. Thomas, De Virtutibus in Communi, a. 9. 1 “ Character habet rationem signi per comparationem ad sacramentum sensibile a quo impri­ mitur ” (St. Thomas, III, q. 63, a. 2, ad 4; cf. a. 1, ad 2). 4 St. Thomas, De Virtutibus in Communi, a. g. “ There is a specific difference between the infused moral virtues whereby men behave well as fellow-citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, and the acquired virtues, whereby’ men behave well in human affairs ” (I-II q. 63, a. 4). 198 CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER nature (whether wholly so, and these are the most numerous, or only partially so—“mixed” matters, such as the effects of marriage, education, etc.); and it takes accidental disciplinary measures concerning matters essen­ tially civil but becoming spiritual hie el nunc, as touching the altar. The Church intervenes here to defend spiritual goods in the strict measure demanded by this defence; she herself takes the concrete initiative of the materially political (but formally spiritual) act; and her intervention may be effected by “civic Catholic action”—this is properly Catholic action and not political action, since its object is to defend, for the sake of the spiritual, values that are proper to the city of God, though involved in the temporal order.1 Thus the same men are drawn into the orbit of two great visible com­ munities, of two societies, each being perfect and supreme in its sphere, whose specific ends, jurisdictional powers, and formal bonds, arc profoundly distinct. The Pope alone could be an exception; but if, with a view to safe-guarding the free exercise of his spiritual power, he voluntarily assumes the charge of a political principality, as in fact he did for a long period, the line of partition between the spiritual and the temporal will run through his own heart. How do these great communities confront each other within the soul of a man? Are they contraries, and is it the law of each to devour the other and assimilate it? There are some who are so persuaded. Those of them who recognize the divine greatness of the Church, would endow her with a mission to absorb the State.2 Others, much more numerous, want the State to swallow up the Church : it is to this that totalitarianism, whether it flatters or persecutes the Church, whether it be pagan, or atheist, communist, racist or statist, tends of its nature. A third reaction, anarchist this time, would con­ sist in proclaiming the radical illegitimacy of every social hierarchy, divine or human, and in involving the human person in an unbridled revolt.3 All 1 Jacques Mari tain, Questions de Conscience, 1938, pp. 184 and 194. cf. Humanisme intégral (True Humanism, London 1938, p. 293) : “ There is on the temporal plane . . . with regard to the spiritual order, a zone of questions which, in themselves (c.g. ‘ mixed questions ', touching marriage, educa­ tion etc.) or in the circumstances of the case, include a reference to that order: while affecting the earthly city, they also directly concern the good of souls and that of the Mystical Body; the Chris­ tian, as a member of that Body, has to consider them primarily and above all, not in reference to the temporal order and the good of the earthly city (which moreover suffers detriment if higher values arc violated), but as they affect the supra-tcmporal good of the human person and the common good of the Church of Christ.” Wc speak of a 41 civic Catholic action ” in the strict sense. The Abbe Daniel Lallcment’s book, Principes catholiques d'action civique (Paris 1935), which sums up “ the teachings of the Catholic Church concerning politics ”, contains, besides those con­ cerned with chic Catholic action, some principles concerning the civic secular action of Catholics and envisaging their temporal thought and activities, cf. above p. 186, n. 5. 2 “ Dostoïevski was the prophet of the Russian-Orthodox theocratic idea, of the religious light that comes from the East . . . With this false theocratic idea there is bound up in Dostoïevski an equally false conception of the State, an inadequate notion of its independent value, of the value of a State not theocratic but temporal, receiving its religious justification from itself, not from outside, in an immanent and not transcendent way . . . This false anarchism, this will to find no religious meaning in an independent State, arc present in Dostoïevski. They represent a typically Russian trait; perhaps they reveal a Russian malady” (N. Berdiacff, L'Esprit de Dostoïevski, Paris 1929, pp. 251-253) ’ Anarchism was anti-theist in Proudhon, who did not deny God’s existence, but treated Him as an enemy (” Dieu, c'est le mal ”), atheist in Bakunin (“ If Cod really existed we should have to I99 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE these solutions do violence to the human being and hurry liim on to catas­ trophe. It is enough to respect the depth of the mystery’ in man to under­ stand that he has to move towards God in two different ways. By reason of his natural powers, actualized by his acquired virtues, he will move towards his connatural ends, and will therefore enter into civil communities. By reason of the obediential potency of his spirit, actualized by grace and the infused virtues, he will acquire wings on which he may rise to the city of the angels, of Christ, and of the divine Persons. He will walk and fly at one and the same time; and in this there will be no incompatibility. Indeed, he will walk the more surely on the earth when his love draws him towards heaven, and be the better citizen when fully Christian ; it will be the mission of the Church to Christianize civil life. The earthly city and the heavenly city, the State and the Church, dinde man’s inward life between them. The law of an essential duality, from which he will only escape by death, divides his being in this world. The division is grievous, no doubt, but in itself salutary. It does not aim at vainly tearing man apart and producing sterile and un­ ending conflicts. It is meant to bring the various powers of his soul by different routes to the same God. It was always present, but it only came to light on the day when the Saviour uttered, as it were in passing, the famous words: “Render therefore unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that arc God’s” (Matt. xxii. 21) : words which sanctioned the just rights of Caesar while creating the rights of the Church, and which were to overturn the age-long totalitarianism of the pagan world. St. Augustine drew attention to it forcibly.1 It is a homicidal folly and an offence to the Gospel to want to change the distinction between Church and State into opposition. The conflicts that have arisen between them in the course of history are accidental, not of the true essence of either. warn Him off’1), Christian in Tolstoy (“ Every Church, as a Church, has always been and cannot help being . . . directly opposed to the doctrine of Christ “ Christianity, properly understood, destroys the State; this was understood from the outset and expbins why Christ was crucified"). 1 In his commentary on the text in which Sl Paul recommends die Christians of Rome to obey the still-pagan authorities of the City, Expositio Quorumdam Propositionem ex Epistola ad Romanos, propos, 72: “The Apostle knew that some would be proud enough to think that since they were called by the Lord to liberty on becoming Christians, they would no longer have to conform to the bws here below, nor submit to the authorities set wcr temporal things. But if we are composed of soul and body, then, as long as we live dûs temporal life we shall have need of temporal things to maintain it. We must therefore in that respect obey the authorities, that is to say the men who arc pbced in office to govern human things. But in so far as we believe in God and are called to His kingdom, we are not to obey those who would destroy the gift of God that leads us to eternal life. If therefore anyone thinks that just because he is a Christian he is exempt from paying the taxes and from duly honouring those to whom the government is entrusted, he is die victim of a grievous error. And if anyone on the contrary’ considers that the authorities set over temporal things have any power over his faith, he falls into a worse error. Here we must do what the Saviour commanded and give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s. And although indeed we are called to a kingdom on which the temporal authorities have no power, yet while we remain in this present life and are not jet came to the age when all prineipality and power will disappear, we must bear with our condition, and respect the order of human things, doing nothing deceitfully, and obeying, even in this very matter, not so much men as God who ordains it.” 200 CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER B. The Respective Dominions by Church and State: Nature, not Territorial of the Church, Church and State meet on the same territories. How define the dominium of each? Man’s dominion over external things—a feeble reflection of the divine dominion over the being and the activity of all creation—is the power, flow­ ing from his intelligence and his will, of using them for his own ends, as if they had been made for him.1 It can take two forms. First there is the dominion inherent in the human person, the use of external things which each individual person has the right to make for his own ends. There we have personal property, the dominium humile. Then there is the dominion of the civil power, the use of external things which the civil power has the right to make for the common good. There we have the high dominion, the dominium altum. It is not meant to supplant personal property but to make it more secure, more fruitful, better distributed and better regulated. And if the State may itself become pro­ prietor of certain domains and non-movables, of certain industries and public sendees, this is only the more efficiently to favour the autonomy and personal property of its subjects. What dominion does the Church claim over these external things? Exactly that which is needful for the complete fulfilment of her spiritual mission. First of all, to safeguard the free exercise of his sovereign spiritual jurisdic­ tion, the Pope will have the canonical right—subject of course to all the claims of justice—to a civil principale, whereby he will possess, to the exclu­ sion of all other political power, the dominium altum over a portion of territory, to be administered by him as by any other temporal prince. It is clear that this principale, standing alongside other temporal principales to guarantee the independence of the pontifical power, will not of its nature tend to supplant these others; any more than the movable or immovable property of the State will tend of its nature to supplant other personal properties. Save only for this temporal principate, which does not enter into her structure but is annexed to it from without, the Church as such cannot with­ out usurpation claim dominium altum over any territory. It is not her business, but that of political governments, to look to the security, regulation and development of personal property. In this sense she ought to refuse, as Jesus did, the kingdoms of this world and their glory. A territory, a kingdom, may be added to her from without, but she remains intrinsically and of her very nature a non-territorial society, a society without a fatherland. She must neither retreat into some determinate region as into an entrenched camp, nor extend the frontiers of the pontifical state to those of her mission to all 1 St. Thomas, II—II, q. 66, a. j. We are not concerned here with the dominion of man over man which is realized in a command (imperando) not by utilization (utendo), and which is subdivided according as it is directed to free subjects or to slaves, cf. I, q. 96, a. 2 and 4. 201 Im ! t THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE mankind. Even in the Middle Ages that was never her ideal;1 and if the canonical power then penetrated deeply into political life, this was not, as we shall sec, in virtue of any essential and permanent claim of the Church, but of a particular conception of Christian political order. This conception was legitimate, I hold, for the epoch in question, but is not bound up with the life of the Church. If the Church is essentially non-territorial she must needs have her being in the territories of others. In this sense she will dwell on the earth as a stranger. Like the God who lies hid in the Host, she too, a supernatural person of whom the world is not worthy, will ask only of States, in order that she may live with them, this dominium humile, this right of personal pro­ perty', which they cannot abolish without injustice. But this right will then be doubly inviolable: first, as personal property’, so that they’ cannot despoil her of it without tyranny, without overturning the equity' they exist to defend; and again as religious property, so that they cannot take it away without sacrilege and outrage on religion.2 Thus the Church, though she is greater than the states, is yet subject to them in one respect. She is bound to 1 The consecration of the Emperor and of kings aimed at making them princes of Christendom, not vassals of the pontifical state; and St. Thomas’s expression about “ reges vassalli Ecclesiae " (Quodlibd, 12, q. 13, a. 19, ad 2) either refers to some particular kings or is to be taken in a broad sense. 3 'Fhe whole question of the rro/ by which ecclesiastical goods (rtr) were, in ancient canon law, declared exempt from civil charges and taxations, depends, in the last analysis, upon the supernatural character of the personality of the Church, on account of which it may be said that these real immunities (and oilier ecclesiastical immunities) have their origin in the divine law. “ In the eyes of our ancestors,” wrote L. Choupin, M the goods of the Church were the goods of God Himself, and, as such, were wholly withdrawn from the power of princes, and free, consequently, from secular taxation. Severe ecclesiastical penalties sanctioned this immunity, and in spite of resistance here and there, it was generally recognized " (” Immunités ecclésiastiques ", in the Did. apd. de lafoi catholique, col. 619). Since the political society of the Middle rXges recognized the supernatural character of the Church, she appeared in all eyes in the light of a public utility—in this instance of a super-eminent sort. Ecclesiastical goods were thus entitled, like those of the public domain, to exemption from taxation. This right to exemption could and should be recognized even by states that no longer live under a “ consecrational ” regime like that of the Middle Ages, and politically tolerate all religions. Père Choupin writes in the same article: 0 Man’s religious aspira­ tions arc unquestionably his most indispensable aspirations: any thing dial sen es them is of genuine public utility. Hence ecclesiastical goods properly so-called, church buildings, chapels, convents, presbyteries, seminaries and so forth, are earmarked for a public senicc. Is it not therefore merely just and equitable to exempt them from taxation? In England, in America, some part of the goods of the Church, notably the buildings dedicated to public worship, are not subject to tax. Nothing could be more legitimate: it is an excellent example of impartiality, of true liberalism, on the part of Protestant states. The Church, by promoting religion, contributes much to the prosperity of the State.” Let us add that the present Code of Canon Law says nodiing about real immunities in fiscal matters: the question is left to be setded in the various Concordats. z\s for the local immu­ nities, they comprised in the old Canon Law a. the right of asylum, known to pagans, securing by common consent the inviolability of certain criminals taking refuge in the sacred places : they could not be seized by the secular arm save by permission of the ecclesiastical authorities, who would thus protect diem against revengeful violence; b. interdiction of profane acts, prohibiting civil demon­ strations in sacred places. There is a trace of this last immunity in Canon 1160 of the Code: “ Holy places are exempt from the jurisdiction of the civil authority, and the legitimate authority of the Church is to be freely exercised there.1 This provision aims at protecting the dignity of public worship by reserving the wholly spiritual jurisdiction of the Church. No more than in the foregoing cases does it propose to deprive die State of its dominium altum and transfer it to the Church. 202 CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER obey their just laws. The theologians have recognized this,1 and Gajetan gives it precise point in a celebrated text.2 She will be more or less at their mercy, and they will find it easy to despoil her, to rob her of the means of subsistence, to stifle her; it has in fact been her fate to be constantly dis­ possessed and as often rehabilitated. But clearly, they cannot behave in this way without calling in question the rights on which they themselves are based. Here again, these conflicts between Church and State remain accidental; only by a violation of the nature of things could they be made essential. 2. THE CHRISTIANIZATION OF CIVIL LIFE BY THE CHURCH: ILLU­ MINATION OF THE TEMPORAL ORDER Temporal AcnvmES Simply Their Existence in a Human Subject; with Others, on Account of Their Content A. The Spiritual Connected on Account of with some In coming to divinize the inmost depths of a man, to make him a citizen of heaven, a member of Christ, a living temple for the divine Persons, grace and the infused virtues make their influence felt throughout the whole range of his temporal activity, and speed his progress towards his political and properly human ends. The plane of spiritual activity remains clearly distinct from the plane of temporal activity, even when this is directed and penetrated by the spirit of the Gospel. To the first plane belongs the work of the infused virtues and the things of the interior life looking directly to God. To the second belong the work of the acquired virtues and the things of the cultural life, notably those of political life which are directly Caesar’s concern, but for God’s sake. “ Let every soul be subject to higher powers. For there is no 1 When they affirm that the real immunity is of divine right, they do so, says Choupin, “ in the sense that the State cannot, of its own authority, lay burdens upon ecclesiastical property: for that needs the consent of the Church which, by divine law, is a perfect society” (loc. cit, col. 618). But they’ affirm at the same time that the Church is bound to recognize the just demands of the State in matters of dominium altum. Sec the note following. 2 To prevent too great a concentration of goods, the Old Law provided that every fifty years, the jubilee years, everybody should regain possession of his landed property (Lev. xxv. 13). To justify this legal provision St. Thomas explains that if the sale of land were unregulated it would pass into the hands of a few and large areas would be depopulated. And he cites a text of Aristotle's affirming the necessity of ordering possessions in view of the common good (I—II, q. 105, a. 2, ad 3). Commenting on this passage of St. Thomas, Cajetan remarks that when the laws of a country determine a reasonable maximum size of individual holdings of land, these laws, being just, will be recognized by the Church; so that the Church would be bound to sell any surplus land which might come into her possession (in I—II, q. 105, a. 2). We must of course remember, adds Cajetan, that some ecclesiastical goods that might seem superfluous if enjoyed only by the ministers of the Church are not so in reality, and remain legitimate if we have regard to the charitable works performed by these ministers (in II—II, q. 32, a. 5, no. 5). However, even when the revenues arc distributed in charity, properties that are too large may be justly limited, since the mode of exploitation then tends to become less personal, less human, and, in the long run, less fruitful. It was on the eve of the Reformation that Cajetan remarked that the goods of the Church were not to be increased indefinitely (the Commentary on the Secunda Secundae was finished in 1511). At this period, wrote Grisar, “ in virtue of the pious donations that had accumulated in the course of centuries, the Church had become too wealthy. Thus, in the diocese of Worms, about three-fourths of all property belonged to ecclesiastical proprietors” (Luther, St. Louis and London 1930, p. 125). 203 i THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE power but from God ... Therefore he that rcsistcth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God . . . Wherefore be subject of necessity, not only for wrath but also for conscience’sake”: so writes St. Paul (Rom. xiii. 1-5), who here gives us the full meaning of the Reddite Caesari. The planes of the spiritual and of the temporal arc in themselves different, but they cannot be separated. “One is subordinate to the other; the temporal as such needs to be vivified by the spiritual; the common good of civilization demands of itself to be referred to the common good of life eternal, which is God Himself. On the one plane as on the other, my work will only be well done if 1 have, in regard to the object in view, the necessary competence and the needed instruments: but even when I act as a citizen of another city than the Church of Christ, the Christian life and truth should permeate my activity from within, should be the living soul and direction of all the material, whether of knowledge or means of realisation, that I bring into play ; and this whatever be the object of my work, whether it is, as in planting a vine or building a house, one which belongs in itself to a technique independent of the Christian faith, or, as in things of the social and political sphere, one where, however large the part played by technical elements, the ethical order predominates, and hence one that intrinsically depends on the higher principles assigned by Christian faith and the Christian wisdom that comes from above.”1 We need not fear to push the debate too far. The general question of the subordination of the temporal to the spiritual, of the profane to the sacred, is evidently wider than the more particular question of the jurisdictional relations of Church and State. It is the whole field of temporal life that is due to fall under the attraction of the whole field of spiritual life. But, as we have just seen, the activities of the temporal life can be disposed into two groups. In the first we shall put all those activities which, in themselves, do not directly involve ethical and contemplative values: gardening, cooking, building canals and aeroplanes, studying algebra and the sciences—in the sense in which science is opposed to wisdom2—and so forth. It is not by reason of their content but solely on account of their existence in a human subject redeemed by the blood of the cross and bound to direct all his acts to eternal life, that these temporal activities are touched by the breath of the spirit? ’Jacques Maritain, Tnu Humanism, pp. 290-291. 2 “ In an intermediate sense . .. the word knowledge is taken in opposition to the highest regions of our understanding. In this sense it means science in contradistinction to wisdom, and has to do with the less exalted regions of our understanding. We do not describe botanical or linguistic knowledge as wisdom, but as science. Wisdom is knowledge through the highest sources and in the deepest and simplest sense. But knowledge or science in this second sense means knowing in detail and br proximate or apparent causes, In this sense we speak of * science, or the special sciences * ** (J. Maritain, Science el sagesse (Science and Wisdom, London 1940, pp. 4-5). The distinction between science and wisdom, the lower and the higher reason, is indicated by St. Thomas (I. q. 79, a. 9) who borrowed it from St. Augustine (De Trinitate, books XII-XTV). On the various meanings of this opposition in St. Augustine, sec Henri-I renée Marrou. Saint Augustin el la fin de la culture antique, 1933» PP· 37θ and 563. 1 According to St. Augustine and St. Thomas, human acts, at least if considered in relation to the natural end of man, are, in the concrete, always either good or bad, never indifferent. z\nd 204 CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER In the second group we shall put activities which, over and above all technical and scientific values, bring into play of themselves the highest of human values, the values of ethics and wisdom. Such arc social, political and philosophical activities. It is not simply on account of their existence in a subject wayfaring towards eternity, but also by reason of their very content, of their specific object, that these activities should receive influence and regulation from the spiritual order. And what will be the effect of this influence and regulation? First, it will tend to heal, to rectify the deviations that are bound to occur in human temporal activity, since it comes from crea­ tures fallible in their own nature and wounded by their revolt against grace, so that they pursue the good and the true with diminished powers, even when this good and true arc, in themselves, proportioned to their nature, con­ natural.1 Innumerable errors, philosophical, moral, economic, political, cultural—concerning the place of the human person in the universe, how he is to attain his last end, his multiple social relations, the use to be made of worldly goods—are brought to light and corrected by the healing function of revealed truth and divine grace. That is not all. The influence of the spiritual not only rectifies the defects of natural activities; it permeates them through and through and gives them tone, infuses them with new sap, and this without in any way removing them from their own plane and their proper laws ; even in their own specific sphere—that of philosophical research, economic and political organization, artistic invention—it operates to sub­ limate them,*23 to give them a new splendour which is the proper effect of Christianity; so that we can indeed have a Christian philosophy, a Christian economics and politics, a Christian art, and, more generally, a Christian Pius X declares that the Christian “ no matter what he is doing, even in the temporal order, has no nght to neglect those goods that surpass nature, nay, the laws of Christian wisdom oblige him to direct them all towards the Sovereign Good as towards his last end; now all his actions, as morally good or bad, that is to say as conforming or not conforming to natural and divine law, fall under the judgment and jurisdiction of the Church” (Encyclical Singulari Quadam, 24 Sept. 1912). Theologians observe however that in a very particular sense, that is, with respect to the supernatural end of man, there can be concrete acts which are neither good nor bad, that is to say neither meritorious nor culpable: for example, the alms given out of pure natural compassion by those who voluntarily remain in a state of mortal sin. But such alms, nevertheless, are ethically good. 1 As regards the true, St. Thomas writes: “ Even as regards those truths about God which human reason could have discovered, it was necessary that man should be taught by a divine revelation; because the truth about God such as reason could discover would only be known by a few. and that after a long time, and with die admixture of many errors ” (I, q. 1, a. 2). The same might be said of truths relating to the soul and to the conduct of human life. In his Apostolic Letter Tuas Libenter of 21 Dec. 1863, Pius IX recalled that although the natural disciplines rest on their own principles, known by reason, it is important that Catholics who cultivate them should always keep divine revelation before their eyes as a guiding-star, veluti rectricem stellam (Dcnz. 1681). As regards the good, St. Thomas writes: “ In the state of wounded nature man falls short of what he could do by his nature, so that he is unable to fulfil it by his own natural powers. Yet he ... can accomplish some particular good, as to build dwellings, plant vineyards and the like; yet he cannot do all the good natural to him so as to fall short in nothing ... so that he needs a gratuitous strength super­ added to natural strength ... in order to be healed ” (I—11, q. 109, a. 2). 3 On the authentic way in which an inferior activity can be sublimated, that is to say super­ elevated. but not changed or robbed of its essence, by a superior one, as instinct in man can be sublimated by spirit, see T. L. Peniso, La conscience religieuse: Essai systématique suivi D'illustrations Paris, 1935, p. no. 205 !1 i il· 1 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE culture—Christian, that is, in its inner inspiration, and in the way in which it faces the problems of life in time. In thus impregnating with its influence the activities which flow from the acquired virtues and which are specified by ends that are immediately cultural, Christianity communicates its own impetus, so that they march with a surer, quicker, lighter step towards their own cultural ends; one can say of them what the Vulgate says of those who hope in the Lord: ‘'they shall take wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not hunt” (Isa. xl. 31). B. Cultures Illuminated Work thus Kingdom of God; but the Cultural Sublimated Itself Outside the Kingdom by the Should we attribute these spiritual influences which orientate temporal things to a last end, rectify and invigorate them, to the temporal or to the spiritual order, to the Kingdom of God, or to the world of culture? Formally considered they belong to the Kingdom of God. They affect the world of culture, the philosophic, economic, social, political and artistic life of a people, but they do so as an analogical cause which remains trans­ cendent to its effects. The ray of grace and truth which falls on a culture and operates to heal its wounds and sublimate it, belongs indeed to the Kingdom of God. It is as it were an overflow from that Kingdom, tending to rectify and inspire the stuff and environment of a world in which other influences also—those of man, those of the devil—play their part. So that a culture, a civilization, even Christian, can be said to belong to the Kingdom of God not properly but only in a certain respect, only to the extent to which it receives the rectifications and illuminations we have mentioned. So then, while the spiritual influences affecting a culture belong formally, and in themselves, to the Kingdom of God, the cultural work itself on which these influences fall is, properly speaking, exterior to the Kingdom.1 It belongs to the temporal sphere. It derives immediately from human energies and resources, from acquired virtues and habits, which may be aided and 1 Wc shall therefore not say, with Francis of Vittoria, that “the Church in its entirety is a single body, civil society and spiritual society not making two bodies but one ” {Reledio Prior, De Poleslate Ealesiae, edit. Gctino. Madrid-Valencia 1934, vol. II, p. 74). Vittoria clearly distinguishes the tem­ poral and spiritual powers, but he encloses both in the Church. We shall return further on to the medieval tendency to include the secular Christendom and the State in the Church. It is strong in Soloviev. It must be admitted, writes Fr. S. Tiszkiewicz, S.J., that “ Soloviev, in spite of his enthusiasm for the prindple of the Papacy had, at the time he wrote Russia and the Universal Churchy no very clear idea of the divino-humanity of the Church. As regards the human element in the Church we find an exaggeration, a reduplication; there are, as it were, two bodies: on the one hand the social body proper to the Church as distinct from other societies, a visible body with the Pope at its head, and on the other the Christian State, governed by an ideal monarch, the State being almost a part of the Church. We are far from Moehler’s Symbolik, which brings out so strongly the supra-national character of Christianity.” The same author adds: “Vladimir Soloviev has done us much barm in the eyes of the Orthodox . . . His theocracy presents Catholicism in a light that makes it unacceptable to them. But wc must pardon him this ill service . . (“ La théologie moehlériennc de l’unité et les theologies pravoslaves in UÉglise est une, hommage à Moehler, Paris 1939, pp. 276 and 290). 206 CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER vivified by the spiritual but function here as temporal agents and for temporal ends. The temporal should subordinate itself, as I have said, to the spiritual, not to abdicate, not to renounce its own nature, not to allow itself to be absorbed; but, on the contrary, to save its true temporal nature, so that, thanks to the purifying and elevating influence of the spiritual, it may tend of itself to its own better temporal development; as the flora and fauna of a country feel the benefit of a favourable climate without in any way being withdrawn from the laws of vegetative and sensitive life. From the standpoint of efficient causality wc might say that spiritual energy acts on the temporal, as a principal cause of higher rank acts on lower principal causes; it penetrates and elevates them. From the standpoint of final causality we might say that the temporal is ordered to the spiritual as an intermediate end might be, which, while having its own native dignity, is nevertheless referred to a higher and ampler end. This, for example, in animals the vegetative functions (respiration, nutrition, reproduction) arc modified and elevated by contact with sensitive life—their primary value lies in themselves, but they are besides referred to sense experience, which is something of a higher order. The subordination of the lower efficient cause to the higher, of the inter­ mediate or infravalent end to the higher and supravalent, being essential and intrinsic, wc can speak of an essential and intrinsic subordination of the temporal to the spiritual. Thus subordination is of such a nature that the sources of temporal activity in no way lose their character as principal causes (lower), so as to be changed into mere instruments of the spiritual; and that the ends of temporal activity in no way lose their character as ends (inter­ mediate, infravalent), so as to become mere means to the spiritual. The distinction, subtle perhaps, but capital, between a lower principal cause and a mere instrument, and the corresponding distinction between an intermediate end and a pure means, should never here be lost sight of; the lower principal cause acts by virtue of its form, of its nature, the motion it receives being only the condition of its activity; whereas the pure instrument docs not act of itself at all, the motion it receives being the total cause of its activity. Similarly, the intermediate end is, absolutely speaking, an end, some­ thing desirable for its own sake; it is only in a certain sense that it is a means, something desirable for the sake of something else; whereas the pure means is desirable solely for the sake of something else.1 1 “ Duplex est causa a gens, principalis ct instrumentales. Principalis quidem operatur per virtutem suae formai cui assimilatur effectus . . . Causa vero instrumentalis non agit per virtutem suae formae, sed solum per motum quo movetur a principali agente: unde effectus non assimilatur instrumento, sed principali agenti ” (St. Thomas, III, q. 62, a. 1). Cajetan explains how the autonomy of principal causes can subsist under the motion of the first cause, without which they would be reduced to the state of instruments: “ Non enim causa secunda movet ob hoc praecise quia movetur, sed etiam, ex virtute propria . . . Stat causam secundam necessario moveri a prima, ct cum hoc, ipsum moveri modificari cx natura causae secundae; et sic movere causae secundae provenit non ex moveri tantum, sed ex moveri et modo proprio ipsius causae secundae ” (in I, q. 19, a. 8, no. xiv). John of St. Thomas thus describes an intermediate end: “ Habet veram rationem finis, etiam non ultimus (ric), sed participatam, in quo rationem medii aliquo modo induit; simpliciter tamen habet rationem finis, 207 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE C. Temporal Values Sublimated I ί I I I I I » I « and Values Become Spiritual In certain circumstances, of course, temporal activities can be treated as strict instruments of the spiritual; the acquired habits and virtues can func­ tion, with spiritual good in view, as pure instruments of the infused habits and virtues, and cultural values can be regarded as pure means to the spiritual. But when that happens the temporal is shorn of its own laws and ends, becomes itself spiritual so as to be incorporated in the spiritual, con­ verted into the spiritual, absorbed into the spiritual; natural resources, acquired virtues and dispositions, things in themselves temporal or cultural— such as churches, religious houses, benefices, treasures of art, the languages needed for worship or for preaching, the liturgical chant—all these, on account of the direct use of them made by the Church and the immediate purposes to which they are referred, at once become spiritual. Thus we admit that the acquired virtues and dispositions, psychological resources, and temporal values in general, can be elevated by the spiritual in two typically different ways. First—while they are still functioning as principal second causes, according to their own laws and within their own sphere, but under the rectifying and illumining influence of the spiritual order and of the Gospel virtues. We shall then have a Christian philosophy, a Christian economy, a Christian sociology, a Christian politics, a Christian art, in short, a culture that is Christian but distinct from the Church and from the Kingdom of God: Christian culture then being the domain of human and temporal life restored and inspired by the Gospel, and the Church being the Kingdom of life divine and eternal. Second, temporal activities and values can function as pure instruments of the spiritual: they will then have been taken up out of their own plane to be reintegrated and re­ absorbed into the Kingdom of God. D. The Spiritual Light’s Union With Building of a the Temporal for the Christian Society Spiritual influences acting on the temporal for the good of the temporal, to orientate, inspire and sublimate it, are subject to two phases which ought to be carefully distinguished. In the first place, such influences operate by way of men, clerics or laymen (the latter being bearers of Catholic action, one of whose ends is to Chris­ tianize the temporal human order) who work in the name of the Church and engage her responsibility; they arc acting in their capacity as Christians, as quia simpliciter est appetibile, licet participative : sicut substantia creata est ens per se, participative tamen ab increata ” {Cursus Phil., Phil. Kat., I pan, Vives cd., vol. II, q. 13, a. I, p. 242). Further on he thus distinguishes the principal cause and the instrument: “ Propria et formalis ratio causae instrunientalis, ut distinguitur a principali, consistit in eo quod operetur ut motum a principali agente, si ‘ ut motum ’ dicat totam virtutem et rationem operandi; non vero si dicat solam ccncausam coopaankm, vel amdilitmm requisitam ” (ibid., vol. II, q. 26. a. 1, p. 4.39). 208 CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER such, as members of Christ and citizens of the Kingdom of God, to safeguard certain primordial and permanent temporal values, the radiant centres of cultural life. The presence of these values appears to be morally necessary to the normal exercise of the spiritual life itself, in the general run of men. Thus, in the doctrinal order, the Church takes up on its own account the defence of certain fundamental truths concerning the nature, life and destiny of man, concerning social justice, the civic conscience, the rights and duties of political society, the origin of authority, the unity of the human race and the solidarity of all men. These truths arc in substance temporal— they arc spiritual only for the radiance they receive from Christianity, for the Christian light1 that confirms and illuminates them; and they represent a frame of reference, the touchstone, if you will, by whose aid we may appreciate and judge the broad tendencies of the world of philosophy, art, and the moral, social and political sciences. Thus again, but now in the practical order, the Church takes up on her own account the defence of certain virtues indispensable in the work of civilisation, virtues such as humanity, friendship, loyalty, fidelity, justice, clemency, generosity; more generally and more profoundly, she strives to foster an attitude of soul, a spirit, in which all cultural problems should be taken up, an attitude, a spirit, which flows from and finds its highest instance in divine charity, and is capable of marvellously purifying and elevating the civilizing virtues. Here then is the first way, the first phase, we have to deal with: the spiritual ray that lights up the temporal here remains pure, undivided, unalloyed.1 Taken at this first stage, the influence of the spiritual is capable of pre­ paring the Christianization of a culture; it may favour a Christian style in politics, economics, philosophy and art, impregnating these with Christian principles and a Christian spirit. But it is essentially incapable of setting a society on foot, of giving existence to a cultural whole and bringing it to a successful issue. The construction of a temporal society, the building up of a civilization, demands activities and means that are properly human. But the men who set about these temporal tasks, if Christian, if regenerated by grace, will work as Christians, with a Christian conscience and without even 1 This light is supernatural only quoad modum. ‘ It has been remarked that the passage of the Encyclical Pascendi condemning the error that “ every Catholic, because also a citizen, has the right and the duty to pursue the public good in whatever way seems best to him, without troubling about the authority of the Church, or taking account of her wishes, counsels, commands, and even despising her reprimands ” (Denz., 2092), can be applied under two different heads. First, under the special head of the “ defence of the altar ” of the immediate defence of the spiritual, including interests ordinarily temporal, but become hie el muu, spiritual; “ the Church herself here takes the initiative in the Christian’s political act or refusal ”, and this kind of intervention engages “ civic Catholic action ”, a branch of Catholic action. Secondly under the head of the moralformation of the citizen's conscience, cf. Jacques Maritain, True Humanism, p. 293: “ With regard to the temporal order itself [there is] a zone of truths connected with the revealed truths of which the Church is the depositary, and which directs from above Christian thought and temporal activity; thus the Encyclicals of Leo XIII and Pius XI have elaborated the principles of a Christian political, social and economic udsdom, which does not de­ scend to particular determinations of the concrete, but which is like a theological firmament for the doctrines and more particular activities engaged in the contingencies of the temporal sphere.” cf. above, p. 186, n. 4. 20Q i · i THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE provisionally setting God and Christ aside.1 Then appears the second stage, the second phase of the penetration of the spiritual into the temporal. It is brought about by Christians dedicated to the maintenance and progress of culture, living in the midst of the complexities of technical life, who therefore cannot pretend to engage the authority of the Church; for this transcends all the divergencies, oppositions, and legitimate conflicts between civili­ zations. The spiritual radiance that here falls on the temporal is the more divided and refracted the more it penetrates the temporal shadows; it de­ mands to be associated with a multiplicity of ephemeral manifestations of cultural life so as to be embodied in them and by them; with the various types of political regime, the various efforts at economic amelioration, the various branches of work and technique, the various styles of art, the various vocations of peoples and races. Its destiny is to be broken up so as to enter into partnership with every' honest attempt at cultural improvement, even when these attempts are in opposition to each other.2 1 “ To make Christianity an abstraction, to put God and Christ on one side while I work in the things of the world, is to cut myself in two halves: one Christian half for the things of eternal life,— and for the thing! of time a pagan or semi-Christian, or neutral half, i.e. something infinitely feeble, or idolatrous of the nation, or the race, or the State, or of bourgeois prosperity, or the anti­ bourgeois revolution, or sdmee, or art, made into final ends. Such a division of self is only too frequent in practice . . . When we take note of what it represents in reality, when we apply the light of the intelligence to the formula, we sec that it represents a death-dealing absurdity ... In reality, the justice of the Gospel and the life of Christ within us, w ant the whole of us, to take com­ plete possession of us, to impregnate all we are and all we do. in the secular as well as in the spiritual order. Action is an epiphany of being. If grace takes hold of us and remakes us in the depths of our being, it is so that all our actions should feel its effects and be illuminated by it ” (Jacques Mari tain, Tnu Humanism, pp. 289-290). 1 If it is needful to distinguish twx> moments in the process of the penetration of the spiritual into the temporal, it is because “ with regard to a work which is to descend to the last contingent realizations demanded by the senice of the temporal common good, the competence of an essen­ tially spiritual activity quickly finds its limits. There is such a thing as a judgment of Catholicism on the relations between art and literature on die one hand and ethics and the moral capacities of normal men on the other; but this judgment will not tell me what to think about Joyce’s books or Rimbaud’s poems as works of art. There is such a thing as a judgment of Catholicism on the duty of working for international peace and on the principles of social justice; but this judgment will not tell me what to think about the forty-hours' week or the constitution of the United Nations. It is for me to judge as a Catholic (as far as possible with a Catholic mind, rather than with a Catholic party mind), but with no pretence to speak for Catholicism, nor to commit other Catholics as Catholics. It is not simply because the Church does not wish to be entangled and compromised in temporal matters that this distinction is to be made; it is because differentiations are involved that are bound up with the nature of things, and it is these that account for the Church’s attitude. And it is finally because the honesty and integrity of the action—spiritual action on the temporal plane, temporal action on its own temporal plane—suffer from the neglect of these differentiations ” (Jacques Mari tain, Questions de Conscience, p. 182). cf. True Humanism, p. 291 : “ If I turn towards men to speak and act among them, it can be said that on the first or spiritual plane of action I come among them as a Christian—as such, and in so far I engage Christ’s Church; and that on the second or temporal plane of action I do not act as a Christian as such, but I should act as one who is a Christian, engaging only myself, not the Church, but engaging my whole self, not amputated or inanimate— engaging myself who am a Christian, who am in the world and work in the w orld without being of the world, who by my faith, my baptism, and my confirmation, tiny as I may be, have the voca­ tion of infusing into the world, wheresoever I be, a sap and savour of Christianity **. cf. in this con­ nection Cardinal Gasparri’s distinction made in his letter “ E noto ”, to the Archbishops and Bishops of Italy on the subject of the clergy and politics, 2nd October 1922: “ Assuredly the bishops and clergy, as prizate citizens, are not to be denied the right to have their personal political opinions 210 CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER Here then arc the essential exigencies of the Church anxious to accomplish her double task, namely to safeguard her own existence, and to Christianize civil life, to defend the spiritual and to enlighten and inspire the temporal. These exigencies, thus defined, will not of themselves suffice to account for the form taken in the Middle Ages by the intervention of the ecclesiastical authority in political matters. It aimed at fashioning a determinate type of Christendom, a “sacral” or “consccrational” Christendom. This form of intervention, which is not bound up with the essence of the Church, was justified in its main lines by conditions which we look upon to-day as having passed away for ever. E. The Church, Though Not of the World, the World’s Salvation If wc reduce the problem of the relations of the Church with the State and, more generally, with human culture, to its essential elements and permanent features, it seems that we have to recognize two facts, both incontestable, but in union a seeming paradox. First, the Church is so profoundly differentiated from the State, and her divine ends so completely transcend all merely cultural ends, that the law ruling their relations can be but a law of distinction; of themselves Church and State arc not in competition and should not conflict.1 And further, from the fact that all human activities without exception, each in its own way, should help to bring about our return to God, the Last End of the whole universe, it is clear that the activities whose proximate end lies in terrestrial and temporal goods, have to be ordered, rectified, enlightened and sustained by the activities whose immediate end lies in heavenly and eternal goods; so that the spiritual, far from smothering the temporal and impeding its development, will alone be capable of bringing it to its full completeness; not indeed giving it existence, “instituere ut sit",* 12 but giving it a purified and sublimated Christian existence, “instituere ut sit perfecte et christiane." There wc have a received doctrine already found in Augustine3 and preferences, as long as they do no wrong to an upright conscience and to the interests of religion. It is not less evident that ar bishops and clergy they should hold themselves completely aloof from party struggles, and above all purely political competition. Practically speaking, it is true, it is not always easy to draw a precise line. It will not therefore be easy to determine in every particular case in what circumstances a given activity should engage the private citizen only, or the man whose duly gives him a public character. In doubtful cases, as also in those where the action of the bishop and clergy might compromise the religious interests they have in charge, the enlightened zeal of a good pastor of souls will not hesitate to abstain 1 “ The Almighty, therefore, has appointed the charge of the human race between two powers, the ecclesiastical and the civil, the one being set over divine, and the other over human things. Each in its kind is supreme, each has fixed limits within which it is contained, limits which are defined by the nature and special object of the province of each, so that there is, we may say, an orbit traced out within which the action of each is brought into play by its own native right ” (Leo XIII, Encyclical Immnrlale Dei, ist Nov. 1885)« ’ The celebrated formula of Hugh of St. Victor, reproduced in part in the Bull Unam Sanclam, relates to an historic moment in the relations between the Church and European culture. 3 “ Those who say that Christ’s doctrine is harmful to the Republic, let them give us an army composed of soldiers comparable to those who profess the doctrine of Christ; let them give us 211 ■I fit THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE and in the Apologists of the preceding centuries; the Popes of our own day have not ceased to recall it. It opens the Encyclical Immortale Dei on the Christian constitution of states: “The Catholic Church, that imperishable handiwork of our all-merciful God, has for her immediate and natural purpose the saving of souls and securing of our happiness in heaven. Yet in regard to things temporal she is the source of benefits as manifold and great as if the chief end of her existence were to ensure the prosperity of our earthly life.” It is found again in the Encyclical Ubi Arcano, of the 23rd December 1922, in which Pius XI writes that the Church “far from diminishing the power of temporal societies, each legitimate in its place, happily perfects it as grace perfects nature”, and that “if, in virtue of her divine mission, she looks only to spiritual and imperishable goods, yet by reason of the har­ monious interconnection of all things, her action contributes even to the earthly happiness of each man and of human society as effectively as if she had been established expressly to promote it.” In the measure in which it departs from Christianity the movement of history gets out of control, the higher cultural values take second place, might gains upon right, the spirit of hatred supplants the spirit of concord; respect for the human person, the rights of other classes, of other peoples, of other races arc despised; the sanctity of treaties and of agreements is trampled under foot.* 1 citizens, husbands and wives, fathers and children, masters and servants, rulers and judges, tax­ payers and tax-collectors like those who profess the doctrine of Christ. Then let them dare to say that this doctrine is contrary to the Republic! Rather let them not hesitate to admit that if only it be obeyed it is the great salvation of the Republic ; [magnam si obtemperetur salutem esse reipublicae] “ (Epist. auxziii 15). c£ the apostrophe to the Church in the D< Moribus Ecclesia* Catholice*, lib. I, cap. xxx, $3: ·· Thou bringest into the bond of mutual charity every relationship of kindred, and every alliance of affinity. Thou teachest servants to cleave to their masters from delight in their task rather than from the necessity of their position. Thou renderest masters forbearing to their servants from a regard to God their common Master, and more disposed to advise than to compel. Thou unitest citizen to citizen, nation to nation, yea, man to man, from the recollection of their first parents, not only in society but in fraternity. Thou teachest kings to seek the good of their peoples; thou counsellest peoples to be subject to their kings. Thou teachest carefully to whom honour is due, to whom regard, to whom reverence, to whom fear, to whom consolation, to whom admonition, to whom encouragement, to whom discipline, to whom rebuke, to whom punishment; showing both how all are not due to all, and how to all love is due, and how injury is due to none." 1 On the remedies which the Church might provide for die pacification .of the world Pius XI writes in the Encyclical Vbi Arcano Dei, that she has " an inexhaustible capacity to cut out of human life and domestic and civil society the plague spot of materialism, which has already wrought so much damage diere, and to replace it by Christian spiritual discipline of the immortal souls of men, which is so much more powerful than mere philosophy; the capacity also to unite among them­ selves all classes of citizens, and indeed the whole people, in a sentiment of higher benevolence and in a kind of brodierhood, to defend the dignity of each particular man . . .; die capacity lasdy to see that all shall be inwardly informed by God’s teachings and laws, so that the minds of all men, private persons and rulers, even the public institutions themselves, shall be penetrated by a sense of religious duty . . . When therefore states and peoples shall hold it as their sacred duty to rule their political life at home and abroad by the teachings and laws of Jesus Christ, then indeed they will be able to enjoy an inward peace, to live together in mutual confidence, and settle peace­ fully all conflicts that may arise.” cf. also the great words of Pius XI in his discourse of the 24th December 1938: " We would remind all and each that only that is truly and fully human which is Chris­ tian, and that what is antichristian is inhuman’, whether it concern the common dignity of the human race, or the dignity, liberty and integrity of the individual, for whom, saving the necesary co­ ordinations and co-operations, society exists, even as die individual man is ordered to God, Creator 212 CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER But if the law of the relations of the Church with the State, of the spiritual life with the cultural life, is a law of concord, we arc bound to note and admit that in point of fact such concord is a very rare achievement, an equilibrium attainable only with effort, a prize to be won in daily battle. Hostile forces, veiled or open, work unceasingly against it. They are at work, not indeed in the Church as such, since she is holy and unstained, but in those of her children who easily yield to the solicitations of nature, become victims of error, passion, and sin; they arc still more busily at work in social or political movements, in cultural tendencies, in the very heart of those states that take their stand on the cult of riches, the pride of life, and all the other ideologies that thrust aside and despise the holiness of the Gospel. The revelation of St. Paul on the divine origin of the political power, and its fundamental harmony with Christianity, is completed by the terrible revelation of St. John on the diabolical use of the political power as exploited by the Dragon against the Church,1 and on the mortal warfare that goes on till the end of the world between the Woman and the Beast. F. The Law for Time: Duality of Church and State Valid Only Church’s Eventual Re-Absorption of the World of the the It is not the diabolic powers alone, nor the forces of concupiscence alone, that seek to set the Church against the world, grace against nature; there is something else, more subtle. Even to angelic natures, exempt from all passion and disorder, divine grace could seem to come as something alien, so that they could be startled and taken aback when it was proffered and sin made possible for them.2 It is not surprising therefore that the Church, which is the kingdom of grace, should feel in some sense an exile among human societies: that she should disconcert them by the splendour of her revelation, and frighten them as soon as she tries to spread her wings. “The neighbour­ hood of Eternity is dangerous for the perishable, and that of the Universal for the particular.”3 There is a reason for this mystery': the law of duality and Saviour, to whom all should cry out: Deus meus es Tu; and also: Dilexil me el tradidit semetipsum pro me! ” (Doc. Cuth., 20th January 1939). That international good faith, respect for neighbours and for the inviolability of die human person are not hindrances to a realist politics, but arc, on the contrary, the supreme political values, so that politics should regain its place among the moral sciences; that these political values are dependent on religion “ teaching man the bonds that unite him to God ”—one cannot but congratulate the statesman who said all this and meant it, as Mr. Roosevelt did in his speeches of October 1937 and January 1939. 1 cf. also St. Luke iv, 5-6: “ And the devil led him into a high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. ?\nd he said to him: To thee I will give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will I give them." 5 It was natural for the angels to turn towards God as the principle of their natural being; but it was not natural for them to turn to God as the object of supernatural beatitude; and it was this that enabled them to sin (St. Thomas, I, q. 63, a. i, ad 3. cf. De Malo, q. i6, a. 3.) ’ Paul Claudel, “ A la Trace de Dieu ” Positions et Propositions, 1934^ vol. II, p. 83. cf. pp. 79-82: “ Rivière remarks, along with many others, that the Church accommodates herself indifferently to all regimes, provided they’ only leave her free to follow her own divine vocation. But he cannot refrain from putting his finger on a very significant fact: that since the beginning the Church has always and everywhere had difficulties with all forms of society and State, even those that 213 F THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE and accord, which rules the relations of Church and State, of the spiritual kingdom and the cultural world, is valid only while the Church is in time, still a kingdom in chrysalis, a crucified kingdom, and the law of her activity is but a law of sanctification. When she has passed the frontiers of eternity to enter, as St. Augustine says, the liigher City, "the age in which all principality and power shall vanish”, when she has become a kingdom fulfilled, a kingdom of glory, when the law of her activity has changed into a law of transfiguration, then there will be no more distinction between the temporal and the spiritual, because there will no longer be our time, nor our historical movement, nor our culture and cultural progress; the law of duality will be dissipated in the splendour of the heavenly City, and the final kingdom, fully delivered, will absorb into itself the new heaven and the new earth, and all that is other than hell. III. THE REGIME OF SECULAR CHRISTENDOM I. CONSECRATIONAL CHRISTENDOM AND SECULAR CHRISTENDOM Under the influence of the kingdom of grace, that is to say, in a Christian climate, we can envisage the flowering of two general types of political regime.1 Those of the first type—which are not to be dreamed of save in a region populated exclusively or mainly by Christians, indeed by visible members of the Church of Christ—seek to form a political unity of Christians alone, or visible members of the Church alone; granting civic rights to no others. Those of the second type would try to weld into a political unity all the inhabitants of a region, granting citizenship to all no matter what their seem to borrow their own constitutive principles from her. Whether she deals with Roman or Byzantine Emperors, or barbarian princes, feudal chieftains, or communes, or Christian kings, with the revolution or the Emperor Napoleon, or Louis-Philippe, or Victor Emmanuel, or the French Republic, or the Czan, or the Bolsheviks, or the Protestant sovereigns, or the Chinese or the Indians, Japanese, .-\rabs, Turks, Redskins, or the savages of Africa or Oceania, there is always something that does not go smoothly and ends in disputes, persecutions, end martyrdoms . . . Behind the pro­ visional forms of the State lie the great natural principles on which human societies rest—honour, family, fatherland, property—and religion will not accept even these without reserve and without control; she knows how easily they can run amok, she declares that she is greater and stronger than the)· are, she denies their a priori character, she believes that all their value comes from God and that no human relation can have any weight in the balance against the sacred bond that unites the creature to its Creator. When such an idea was introduced into the oriental societies, entirely based on the despotism of the family, we can understand that they trembled to their founda­ tions.” Not that there is any anti-social principle in Christianity. “ He ought rather to say that it contains an architectonic principle so energetic and so cast that no actual society is capable of wholly containing and coming to terms with it." (An English translation of this essay appears in Ways and Crossways, London 1933, p. 89). 1 I am convinced of the capital importance of the distinction between two conceptions, two Christian realizations of the temporal: the “ sacral ” or consecrational Christian conception, and the “ profane ” or secular Christian conception—a distinction which lies at the heart of Mari tain's True Humanism. 214 d*· CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER religion, but directing them to temporal and political ends which Christianity would regard as legitimate and would not disavow. In the first case, Christian values permeate the whole political order; the notion of Christianity, of visible membership of the Church, enters into the ver)' definition of the citizen. That is the Christian consecrational conception of the temporal regime. In the second case, Christian values affect the political order from without, to sustain, enlighten and sublimate it; the notion of Christianity, of visible membership of the Church, remains outside the definition of the citizen; it designates only a perfect way of being a citizen, distinguishing a spiritual family of citizens. That is the Christian secular conception of the temporal regime. We may use the word “Christendom” in a limited and recent sense,1 not directly of the Church nor yet of her successive stages of development and internal organization, but directly of a certain temporal regime of peoples who welcome her, a certain cultural complex which she maintains and inspires, a Christian civilization, a Christian world.2 In this sense there are two possible realizations—not univocal, but proportional and analogical— of the idea of Christendom, two specifically distinct types of Christendom: the consecrational and the secular. 2. TWO WAYS OF JUSTIFYING A SECULAR CHRISTENDOM i. The legitimacy, indeed the necessity, of a secular Christian temporal organization, of a Christendom of the secular type, stands clear when we consider the position of a political power which, while fully resolved to build a Christian political order, finds itself obliged to unite on the plane of civic life, citizens of a single region but varying religious belief. The principle is incontestable that, since faith is something interior, no one is to be con­ strained to it.3 The political power we have in mind cannot allow the consciences of any of its subjects to be forced, and cannot but take cognisance of the multiplicity of the spiritual families to which they belong; it will practise “civil tolerance”. Its whole function, its whole effort, will be to unite these people as citizens and on the temporal plane, following political rules of Christian inspiration, both as regards means and ends.4 1 To want to preserve or restore as it stood the medieval use of this word “ Christendom ”, desig­ nating a complete temporal organization, would be to want to stop the historical dock, or put it back. 3 The expression “ Christian world ” is not necessarily a contradiction as some Barthians main­ tain; St. Augustine had already noted that in Scripture “ the world ” is taken now in a good, now in a bad, sense (Opus Imperfect., Contra Julianum, lib. IV, i8). However, I do not regard a Chris­ tian cultural complex, a Christian world, as something simple and unmixed: it comprises divine and sanctifying influences no doubt, but also man’s part, and the devil’s part. The Church alone is wholly pure; the devil has no part in her; but he has, unfortunately, in her children. 3 Speaking of the heathens and the Jews, St. Thomas declares that they cannot be forced to believe “quia credere voluntatis est” (II-II, q. to, a. 8). That applies to all who are bom of dissidents. 4 In his allocution to Italian jurists of 6 Dec. 1953 (A.A.S., 1953, p. 794), His Holiness Pope Pius XII poses the problem of the civil toleration of diverse religious forms in a new way, and in terms of a world community of peoples: “ The duty of keeping a check on moral and religious THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE There will be no question of falling into ‘'dogmatic tolerance”, which regards all forms of belief or unbelief as equally acceptable, or of seeking some doctrinal minimum common to all the citizens, believing or un­ believing; the sole problem will be how to go to work practically for the realization of a common temporal regime. Undoubtedly the Christian political effort ‘‘comprehended in the fullness and perfection of the truths which it implies, takes in all Christianity; yes, the whole of Christian ethics and dogmatics: it is only through the mystery of the redeeming Incarnation that a Christian sees the proper dignity of human personality, and what it costs. The idea which he has of it stretches out indefinitely, and only attains the absolute fullness of its significance in Christ.” But by the very fact that it is ‘‘secular and not sacred, this common task does not in the least demand in its beginnings a profession of faith in the whole of Christianity from each man. On the contrary, it includes in its characteristic features a pluralism which makes possible the convivium of Christians and non-Christians in one temporal city. Hence, if by the very fact that it is a Christian work it supposes by hypothesis that those who take the initiative will be Christians, with a full and total comprehension of the end to be attained, yet it calls to work all men ofgoodwill, all those whom a grasp more or less partial and defective— very defective it may be—of the truths which the Gospel makes known in their plenitude, disposes to give their practical help (which may not be the least devoted or the least generous) in the achievement of their common task. It is here that the text has its fullest force and application: he that is not against you is for you" (Mark ix. 3g).1 It would be to misapply it to behave aberration cannot be an ultimate norm of action. It should be subordinated to norms which arc of a h^her and more general order and which, in certain ciraans tances, permit—and even cause to appear as the better course—the non-prevcntion of error for the sake of the promotion of a greater good.” (The italics are in the text.) 1 Jacques Mantain, True Humanism pp. 200-201. cf. p. 160: the error of theological liberalism would be to pretend “ that because all human opinions of whatever kind have a right to be taught and propagated, the commonweal should be obliged to recognize as licit for each spiritual group the law worked out for that group according to its own principles ”. But, says Maritain, “ that is not my meaning. To me this principle signifies that in order to avoid greater evils (which would be the ruin of the community's peace and lead to the petrifaction—or the disintegration—of consciences) the commonweal could and should tolerate (to tolerate is not to approve) ways of worship more or less distant from the truth: nftu infidelium sunt tolerandi was the teaching of St. Thomas (1-II, to, 11); ways of worship and thus also ways of conceiving the meaning of life and modes of behaviour; and that in consequence the commonwealth would decide to accord to the various spiritual groups which live within it the juridical status which the city itself m its political wisdom adapts on the one hand to their condition, and, on the other, to the general line of legis­ lation leading towards the virtuous life, and to the prescriptions of the moral law, towards whose fulfilment in the fullest obtainable degree it should endeavour to direct this diversity of forms. Thus it is towards the perfection of the natural law and of Christian rectitude that the pluriform juridical structure of the city would be orientated, even in its most imperfect stages and those which are farthest from the ideal of Christian ethics. The positive pole of its direction would be integral Christianity, the various degrees which arc more or less remote or diverted from this end being ordered according to its political wisdom. Thus the commonwealth would be vitally Christian, and the various non-Cbristian spiritual groups included in it would enjoy a just liberty.” And again in Freedom in the Modem World, p. 65, note 1, having recalled the formula attributed by Montalembert to the Catholic opponents of liberalism, and later attributed (wrongly) by Jules Ferry to Veuillot: ‘ When I am the weaker, 1 claim freedom from you since it is your principle; when I 216 CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER “usually without admitting it to oneself, as if the political city could not be usefully served except by Catholics.”1 How, from a Catholic standpoint, can a fraternal accord and partnership on the spiritual plane, between believers of different denominations, be brought about? How could such a partnership be made to result normally in co-operation on the plane of temporal and secular life? These delicate questions were treated by Maritain in a conference at the fourth World Congress of Faiths.2 On the religious and spiritual plane, the basis of this partnership “is not in the order of intellect and ideas, but of that of the heart and of love: it lies in friendship, natural friendship, but first and before all in mutual dilcction in God and for God . . . Love is not given to essences, or to qualities, nor yet to ideas, but to persons, and what we are concerned with here is the mystery of persons and the divine presence within them. The partnership in question is not a partnership of beliefs, but a partnership of men who believe ... In the fraternal dialogue envisaged there is a sort of forgiveness, of remission, not bearing on ideas—they deserve none if they are false—but on the state of those who go along with us. Every believer knows that all men will be judged, himself along with the others; and that neither he nor the other is God, and able to judge the other. And what either is in the eyes of God neither knows. Here the Gospel’s Nolite judicare applies in all its force.” Of this friendship of charity “it will be false to say that it is supra-dogmatic and that it lives in spite of the dogmas of the faith; such a way of speaking is inadmissible for all to whom God’s word is as absolute as His unity and His transcendence.” But it is supra-subjeclive in this sense, that it brings recognition that the other man exists “not as mere accident of the empirical world, but exists in the sight of God and has a right to exist. Love and charity, while still holding to the faith, help us to recog­ nize all the truth and dignity, all the divine and human values, in beliefs that are other than our own; it makes us respect them, it urges us unceasingly to seek in them all that bears the stamp of man’s original greatness and God’s loving-kindness and generosity.” That amounts to saying that “it inevitably involves a kind of tearing apart of a heart fixed on the truth it loves, and fixed also on the neighbour who ignores or misapprcciatcs this truth.” That ίι I J1 u I I I; ; ·< ι ui 4 am the stronger, I take it from you, since that is my principle Maritain adds: No one assuredly professes such a doctrine. If one is to make sure, however, of being no party to it without falling into the error of Montalembcrt himself, in order in other words to effect a real reconciliation between non-Libcralism and Liberty and not to rest in the use of expedients or in the order of intention only, it is, we think, difficult to avoid recourse to a solution of the pluralist type that is sketched here/* The notion of the “State vitally Christian ” has been opposed to that of the “State decoratively Christian ” by the same author in The Rights of Man and Natural Laic, p. 16 (Les droits de Γhomme et la loi naturelle, 1942). Wc arc not to accept the errors of Montalembcrt or those of Donoso Cortès, for whom (1) the Church is compatible with monarchy only; (2) the Church considers almsgiving as an adequate solution to the social problem; (3) the Church and the Army are today die two representatives of European civilization (sec my article “ Pourquoi Joseph de Maistre ct Donoso Cortes ne sont pas nos maîtres’*, in Nova et Vetera, 1949, p. 193). For Lamennais, see Jacques Mari tain’s searching critique of his errors in Raison et Raisons, Paris J 947, pp. 280-3. 1 Questions de conscience, p. 203. 2 Printed in Vie Intellectuelle, August 1939, under the title of “ Qui est mon prochain? ’’ 217 ■ THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE C■ * ε Μ •If 7 is all we can do on the religious plane. From the Catholic standpoint there can be no other rapprochement than that of charity. We cannot “enter any sort of communion less intangible, more determinate, more visible, expressed in some common intellectual symbol or sacred form. But, on the plane of temporal and secular life, this rapprochement ought to be expressed in common activities, should be signified in some more or less strict co-operation having concrete and determinate objects in view—whether there is question of the common good of the political society to which each of us respectively belongs, or of the common good of the whole of our temporal civilization.” A common activity supposes common principles. What community of doctrine in men whose religious convictions are different, will be capable of holding them together in positive co-operation for the good of civilization? For answer let us recall (i) that men are fundamentally united as having a common nature; (2) that the immediate end to be practically achieved is in the natural order. That granted, we can go on to say that “ the unity of the earthly task and the temporal end pursued necessarily suppose a certain community of principles and of doctrine, but not necessarily—however desirable, however evidently better and more effective it may be in itself— a strict and pure and simple doctrinal identity: it suffices that the principles and doctrines should have a unity of likeness or proportion, let us say in the technical sense of the word, of analogy, regard being had to the practical end in question, which, although referable to a higher end, is of itself in the natural order, and is doubtless conceived by each party in the light of the principles proper to each, but in its existential reality is extraposed to these conceptions.” We know of course when we speak in this way that “a complete doctrine, founded on Catholic teaching, can alone bring an entirely true solution of the problems of civilization.” Thus the law of fraternal love, “which either party understands with different theological and metaphysical connotations, and which for Christians striving to fulfil a radical—but terribly contradicted—tendency of our nature is the second commandment like unto the first”, implies at least the practical and implicit recognition of high spiritual values, such as the existence of God, the sanctity of truth, the value and necessity of goodwill, the dignity of the person, the spirituality and immortality of the soul, no matter what theoretical doctrines may be explicitly professed on these points. In this way, men with different religious convictions can collaborate not only, as is evident, “in establishing a technique, in putting out a fire, in helping the hungry and sick, in stopping an aggression. But it is possible—if the analogical likeness between their principles of action just mentioned really exists—that they should co-operate at least and above all in procuring the primary goods of earthly existence, in activities that bear on the good of the temporal city and civilization and the moral values invested in them.” “They will work together for the good of the human city not under cover of any mere equivocation, but in the com­ munity of the analogy between principles, movements and practical pro­ ceedings implied by the common recognition of the law of love, and corres218 J CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER ponding to the primary inclinations of human nature. And why should I conceal the fact that for me, a Christian, according to whose faith one only Name has been given to men whereby they can be saved, that even in the temporal order this community of analogy supposes a first analogue which is purely and simply true? and that implicitly it is to Christ, known to some, unknown to others, that there tends in the end, under more or less pure, more or less perfect forms, all authentic love that works in this world for the reconciliation of men and for the common good of their earthly life?” It goes without saying that under a secular as under a consecrational regime the earthly city, as such, has its duties to God, that it ought to show itself deeply religious and Christian, that it should effectively collaborate with the Church.1 But to fulfil these duties it will neither have to constrain men to some sort of confessional conformity, nor to set up any intercon­ fessional cult. Its Christianity will be shown in the elevation of its temporal ends, the purity of its chosen political means, its public acknowledgement of those Christian values on which all the sanctity of the temporal order depends, and the unfailing respect in which it holds the rights of the Church. It is even conceivable, in a secular regime, that the canonical power might have recourse to the secular arm; not, of course, under its medieval form and as touching all the citizens, but those only who belong to the Church? 2. There is a second and more general justification, based on the nature of things, for the existence of a Christian temporal order of the secular type. If the spiritual and temporal spheres are essentially distinct, and if the second is, in itself, subordinate to the first, it is easy to foresee that in tire organization of their relations two great successive periods, two historical epochs, will be distinguishable. The first of these will begin at the moment when the supremacy of the spiritual order is publicly recognized. Then, on account of the extraordinary power of attraction inherent in spiritual values, they will inevitably begin to envelop, enwrap, and embrace all values of the temporal order, so that these latter will seem in a way to be based on them, or, more exactly, withdrawn behind them, hidden in them, renouncing all ambition for the time being to assert their difference and emphasise their originality. The second legitimate period—(leaving on one side the question, whether in practice it can follow the first without dislocations and dangers)—will begin at the moment when temporal values, though still fully recognized as essentially and intrinsically subordinate to spiritual, begin to be seen with a clearer consciousness of their own specific nature and rôle; as such they will 1 On the actual mode of co-operation between the Church and the State in a secular regime, sec the clarification provided by Jacques Maritain in Man and the Stale, Chicago 1951, pp. 171—9· 1 See Maritain, op. cit., p. 161 : “ The stock phrase, ‘ recourse to the secular arm,’ that is, to civil law, to enforce, in certain circumstances dealing with the public order and the temporal domain, a canonic regulation concerning the members of the Church, means something quite different from the concept of the political power as being the secular arm or instrument of the Church. In a pluralistic society it is but normal that the particular regulations of an autonomous body may be sanctioned by civil law, from the civil society's own viewpoint, when the interests of the common good arc concerned.” 2IQ U. r' ?> <· H ?ΠI I 1 J J r i JU ' THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE be distinguished from spiritual realities, not in the least to be withdrawn from their influence, but, on the contrary’, to achieve a dependence that is to be more conscious of itself, and more conformable to the respective natures of either. For the Church too will profit by this differentiation. It will allow her to appear all the more clearly to the world as the Body of Christ, as the Kingdom not of this world, but capable nevertheless of illuminating all the kingdoms of this world with the light of heaven. To the first epoch corresponds the organization of a Christendom of the consccrational type. To the second corresponds the organization of a Christendom of the secular type. r\nd if the differentiation of which I have spoken represents a normal historical process, a genuine progress, it will be recognized by the understanding and wisdom of the Church as a good and desirable solution of the question of her relations with temporal powers. “Even supposing that religious divisions should one day come to an end, this more perfect differentiation of the temporal order would remain as a gain achieved—the distinction between dogmatic tolerance, which regards liberty to err as itself a good, and civil tolerance, which insists that the com­ monwealth should respect the rights of conscience, will remain stamped in the substance of the city.”1 3. THE HISTORICAL ORDER OF SUCCESSION OF THE ΤΗΌ CHRISTENDOMS •r > After the Edict of Constantine the Graeco-Roman world was moving towards a Christendom of the consccrational type. To the reason for this just given wc may now add other explanations of the historical order. Ancient society, as Fustel de Coulanges has convincingly shown, rested on a confusion of the divine and the social, of the religious and the political.3 Christianity—and in this is its miracle—was powerfully to revive the reli­ gious spirit, but by making a profound distinction between the religious and the political, the things of God and those of Caesar. However, this new and unexpected distinction could not at once manifest all its consequences to the Christians who took over from the ancient world; and since it was consistent •with two forms of political organization, it was natural that the majority should first have looked to the consccrational form, more nearly allied to the old regime, and have given it the preference. Did they have any choice in the matter? The Emperors themselves, in the attempt to reconstruct the Empire on the basis of the living forces of Chris­ tianity, were the first to consider the Christians as the sole true citizens of the 1 Trut Humanism, p. 166. 1 Montesquieu has said that the Romans subjected religion to the State. The contrary, said Fuitel de Coulanges, is nearer the truth: u At Rome, as at Sparta and Athens, the State was enslaved to religion . . . This stale and this religion were so completely fused together that it was impossible not only to conceive a conflict between them, but even to distinguish one from the other” (Ln M antiqtu, p. 194). ibid., p. 257: “ It was at the time of Cicero that it began to be believed that religion was useful to the government; but by then religion was already dead in souls.” 220 CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER Empire, and so to prepare the advent of a Christendom of the consccrational type. That at least seems to be suggested by Fr. Konstantin Hohenlohe: “The great social reform that was to culminate in the abolition of slavery and the remodelling of the Roman family was only made possible by dis­ couraging the non-Catholics, for Catholics alone were prepared for these profound reforms, they alone had learned to respect the slaves and to lead a healthy family life ... It was more especially for political reasons that Constantine and his successors insisted with such a heavy hand on main­ taining unity of faith in the Roman Empire. It emerges, both from one of Constantine’s letters, and from his speech to the Council of Nicaea, that he turned to the Christians because, above all else, he found a social sense amongst them and a spirit of sacrifice hitherto unexampled. In the face of endemic military revolutions, the Church seemed to him to be the sole institution in which any belief in authority and any moral stability remained. Christianity appeared to him and his successors to be the only bond of unity that could prevent the dissolution of the Empire. If they served the unity of the Church, it was because this unity alone could serve their political designs. And that is why every attempt against this unity seemed, at the same time, to be an attempt against the State.”1 The secular form of Christendom which in the abstract might have been the earliest in date, or even the only one to be realized in the concrete, in point of fact came after the consccrational form. The passage from one form to the other could hardly have been effected without a crisis. The end of a Christendom, if it is neither the end of the Church nor the end of the world, will certainly appear as the end of a world, and the birth of another. The crisis was in fact terrible. Instead of evolving normally towards a secular Christendom, medieval Christendom was ravaged by the wars of religion, by the disastrous error of theological liberalism, by the establishment of a regime of separation between the Church and the State, and lastly by the ideologies of Communism and Racism. It seems that a secular Christendom, however extensive and precious its inheritance from the past, is destined to grow’ in the midst of ruins. The evil is immeasurable. But thanks to the divine omnipotence it may well, and all unwittingly, lend itself to the ultimate development of the Church. Thus the errors of theological libera­ lism and of the separation of Church and State, spread now over all the earth, seem to-day to be preparing the great pre-Christian civilizations of the East, and even certain peoples of the Near East, to reject the confusion of the religious and political orders and to recognize the doctrine of the distinction of the spiritual and temporal spheres? 1 Einfluss des ChristaUums auf das Corpus Juris Cicilis, Vienna 1937, pp. 5-7. 5 In China and Japan, the distinction becomes possible between “ religious ceremonies” and “political ceremonies”, between a “ religious cult” and a “purely civil cult” given to the portraits of one's ancestors and images of Confucius—a distinction which, carried a little further, makes possible a solution to the “ rites controversy' ”. 1 <* : 1π THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE IV. THE REGIME OF CONSECRATIONAL CHRISTENDOM To the pagan religion, which in the ancient world was immersed in the social order and identified with the State, there succeeded the Christian. In the measure ofits triumph it brought into being an order in which spiritual things, not separated but definitively distinguished from the temporal, were to permeate them with the influence of the Gospel and organize them into a Christendom. The first of these historical Christendoms was of a type not yet concerned to draw out all the consequences of the differentiation of spiritual and temporal: first because such a task was premature, and next because, in view of the prompt religious unification of the peoples of the West and the diminution of conflicting beliefs within the confines of a single culture, it did not seem to be pressing. In this first type, which I have called consecrational, what notions would be formed of Christendom and of Christian civilization? How shall we characterize the medieval city, con­ sidered (i) in itself and in its intrinsic nature, and (2) with respect to the authority that ruled it? More precisely, how shall we (3) define the coercive power in general, and how explain the Church’s responsibility for the infliction of the death penalty in the days of the Inquisition, and for (4) the wars in the days of the Crusades? In this study of medieval Christendom it is not my purpose to write its history. Writing primarily as a theologian, I wash to establish two things— (1) the legitimacy and logical structure of this type of Christendom; and (2) its contingent and transitory character : for medieval Christendom with all its inevitable imperfections was not the only possible form of Christendom. It will then be my task to determine the powers that devolved upon the Church precisely on account of this historic type of Christendom; and finally to bring out the transcendence of the canonical power, its inalienable spirituality, and its distinction from the inferior powers that have sometimes accompanied it: which last is the chief purpose of the study as a whole. I. THE NATURE OF MEDIEVAL SOCIETE We do not need to grasp the nature of medieval society, but only the nature of the Church, to understand what heresy is in itself and at all times. But without grasping the nature of medieval society we should never understand the very special character which heresy took on at this epoch ; nor why its social consequences differed profoundly from those of other forms of infidelity, those of the heathen, of the Jew, or the Moslem; nor the nature and forms of its repression in the Middle Ages. A. Christian Values Integrated in the Structure of Soctr-t-v It would be incorrect to describe medieval times as those of a confusion between the spiritual and the temporal. Since Our Lord’s decisive utterance 222 CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER about God’s dungs and Caesar's, the two powers, even when united in a single subject, have remained for Christians formally distinct. But their interrelations were characterized in medieval society by the fact that the spiritual order did not confine itself to acting on the temporal as a regulator of political, social and cultural values. It tended besides, in virtue of an historically explicable process, to associate a part of itself with the temporal, to weld that part to the temporal, to become thus united with the temporal, a component element in the structure of society. The idea of “Christian” tended to enter into the definition of “citizen”, and the idea of Christianity into the definition of society, not simply as an extrinsic cause and source of inspiration, but as an intrinsic cause and an integrant part. One had in fact to be Christian, a visible member of the Church, in order to be a citizen; society, in virtue of its constitutional principle, was made up of Christians only. Those who did not visibly belong to the Church were from the first dismissed society: the heathen over the frontiers, the Jews into ghettos. Those who, having first been Christians, afterwards broke with the Church, as heretics or schismatics, constituted a much greater danger—they shook the very bases of the new society and appeared as enemies of the public safety. The medieval society was therefore a composite whole, an amalgam of the spiritual and temporal, in no wise demanded by the nature of things. What is required by the nature of things is the distinction of the spiritual and the temporal, and the subordination of the latter to the former, not their fusion as component parts of society ; and another type of Christian society is always conceivable. But owing to various historical contingencies the medieval fusion was the best, perhaps even the only practicable, solution. In the measure in which the peoples of the West were converted to Christianity, they more and more expressly brought the qualification of “ Christian ” into the definition of citizen, the idea of Christianity into the definition of the society. They had clearly realised that “the divine law that comes of grace does not do away with human law that comes of natural reason”, and that, “in itself, the distinction between faithful and unbelievers does not do away with the dominion and authority of unbelievers over the faithful”.1 But since the attempt was made in the concrete to establish a society constitution­ ally containing none but Christians, it was not enough to be a man to enter it; one had besides to be a Christian. According to a distinction suggested by James of Viterbo, in such a city the natural rights of man as man stood for the material and initial value; and a man’s quality as a Christian, as a visible member of the Church, became the formal and perfective value. A second characteristic of the medieval policy, which stems from that just described, and from the involvement of the spiritual in the temporal I have just mentioned, is that the dominant dynamic ideal was then that of force at the service of right, while today the ideal tends to be—in the 1 St. Thomas, II—II, q. io, a. to. 223 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE non-totalitarian states at least—that of the conquest of freedom and the realization of human dignity.1 I have mentioned the very’ different position which the Middle Ages reserved for simple unbelievers (pagans, Saracens, Jews) on the one hand, and for heretics on the other. B. The Juridical Condition and of the Gentiles Without Within Christendom What, in Christian eyes, was the juridical condition of the Gentiles? What did St. Augustine think about it? What were the views of St. Thomas and his followers? What was the attitude of the Church? i. st. augustlne’s recognition of the legitimacy of political groups MADE UP OF UNBELIEVERS ? The main lines of traditional thought in this matter are easy to make out. The texts that express it, far from refusing pagans all legal status, went so far even as to allow them (though outside the consecrational order) to exercise authority over Christians. That is the burden of the distinction between the things of Caesar and the things of God, made in the Gospel and explained by the Apostle when he recommends the Christians of Rome to obey the constituted authorities, pagan though they were: "‘Let every soul be subject to higher powers. For there is no power but from God; and those that are are ordained of God. Therefore he that resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God” St. Augustine in his turn was often to recall that established authority, even in the hands of pagans, should be regarded as legitimate. He does so for example in his penetrating exposition of the Apostle’s words written to undeceive Christians who, on account of their initiation into spiritual liberty, considered themselves free of all obligations towards the temporal city.2 He does so again in his commentary on Psalm cxxiv where he describes the situation of the Christians under the Emperor Julian: '‘The faithful soldiers served a faithless Emperor. Was it a question of worshipping idols, of offering them incense? They preferred God to the Emperor. Was it a question of mustering for battle, of marching on the enemy? They obeyed at once. They distinguished their eternal Master from their temporal master, and nevertheless for their eternal Master’s sake they obeyed their temporal.”3 And even in the De Civitate Dei, after refusing unbelievers any knowledge of the true republic born of true justice, “of which Christ is the Founder and Guardian”, he goes.on to define the terrestrial republic, people, and city by 1 See Jacques Maritain, Sian and the Stale, p. 160. 1 Expositio Quarumdam Propositionum ex Epistola ad Romanos, propos. 72 (sec above, p. 200, n. x). ’No. 7. St. Thomas, who cites this text, following Gratian (assigning it to St. Ambrose), oppose it to the rule that Christians have to follow in the medieval regime (II-Π. q. 12, a. 2, obj. 1) 22± CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER the pursuit of peace. The peace it pursues, not being the peace of Christ, can hardly be final, but it is not reprehensible either; indeed it is necessary to the City of God during its journey through mortality, and the City of God will not hesitate to obey the laws which guarantee it.1 It is in these same texts that St. Augustine passes sentence on the pagan world and declares that, not having known true justice, “ without which great kingdoms arc merely great robberies ”,2 it could not have known any true city. These severe views (which might be compared with St.John’s maledictions against the Beasts of the Apocalypse, symbols of the powers of iniquity) helped in the Middle Ages to give birth to what H. X. Arquillièrc calls “political Augustinianism " : he characterises this as a “tendency to absorb natural law into supernatural righteousness, the law of the State into that of the Church”, and considers it, with reason, as “a simplified and impoverished form of the great Doctor’s thought, a remote and unforeseen consequence of certain pages of his works, a posthumous derivative of his teaching, in which he would certainly not have recognized his personal thought in its integrity”.3 However, if the teaching of Augustine was too narrowly interpreted by his successors, the truth he brought to light is clear. It is not a denial to the pagans of all legality, peace and true citizenship: it is the assertion that the temporal city cannot be perfect—that is to say based on true justice and true peace—save in dependence on Christianity. How deny, he asks, that the peace so much longed for by the earthly city is a good? And the earthly city itself is a still better good, by reason of the human race it harbours. But when this peace and good begin to be taken as the sole or supreme ones, then indeed catastrophe is on the way? In other words, the common good 1 If, as Cicero would have it, the republic, the city, should be defined by justice, the ancients never knew any republic, since true justice is not to be found save in the republic of which Christ is the Founder and Protector (lib. II, cap. xxi, 4). But “ to adopt more acceptable definitions [probabiliores], it may be said that they knew a kind of republic, which was better administered by the first Romans than by their descendants ” (ibid.). This republic was made of the union of those who, still far from God, sought a peace which was not blameworthy, the peace of Babylon (lib. XIX, cap. xxvi), necessary’ to the City of God, which will not hesitate to obey the laws of the earthly city (ibid., cap xvii). cf. Epistle cxxxiiii, 17: “ God thus showed, in the magnificent and illustrious Empire of the Romans, all that the civil virtues could do, even without the true religion quantum valaent civiles etiam sine vera religione virtutem], so that it might be understood that when this last should arrive, men would become citizens of another City whose king is truth, whose law is charity, and whose mode is eternity.” 2 Lib. IV, cap. iv. 1 L'augustinisme politique, p. 4. cf. Gustave Schnürer, Kirche und Kultur im Mittelalter, 3rd cd., Paderborn 1936, vol. I, p. 69. ” St. Augustine considers the Roman state, in the measure in which it was founded historically on the cult of false gods, as a representative of the civitas terrena. But he no more denies all right and all worth to the State properly so-called than he does to the Roman state.” In short, the terrestrial city is decomposed into the temporal or political city, and the mystical or diabolical city. 411 Non autem recte dicuntur ea bona non esse, quae concupiscit haec civitas [terrena], quando est et ipsa in suo genere humano melior. Concupiscit enim terrenam quamdam pro rebus infimis pacem: ad eam namque desiderat pervenire bellando . . . Hanc pacem requirunt laboriosa bella; hanc adipiscitur quae putatur gloriosa victoria. Quando autem vincunt qui causa justiore pugna­ bant, quis dubitet gratulandam esse victoriam et provenisse optabilem pacem? Haec bona sunt, et sine dubio Dei dona sunt. Sed si, neglectis melioribus, quae ad supernam pertinent civitatem, ubi erit victoria in aeterna et summa pace secura, bona ista sic concupiscuntur, ut, vel sola esse aedantur, vel 22Î * ; THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE of temporal life demands ofits own nature to be ordered to the common good of eternal life: and there we have another aspect of the traditional doctrine. 2. THE DOCTRINE OF ST. THOMAS AND OF HIS FOLLOWERS Following St. Augustine, the high Middle Ages did not refuse to accord a legal status to pagans.1 Later, this doctrine was not lost sight of. The most authoritative theo­ logians defended it. “The divine law, which is the law of grace,” wrote St. Thomas, “docs not do away with human law which is the law of natural reason”, so that, in itself, the fact that princes arc infidels does not prevent them from continuing to reign legitimately even over those of their subjects who may be convened to Christianity.2 St. Thomas explains a little further on, in virtue of the same principle, that the prince who falls into infidelity or apostasy does not, simply on that account, lose his power over his subjects, who remain bound to obey him: “Unbelief, in itself, is not inconsistent with dominion, since dominion is a device of the law of nations which is a human law; whereas the distinction between believers and unbelievers arises from the divine law, which does not annul human law.”3 A precision, demanded by the passage of time, is introduced here: it is of itself that the infidelity of princes leaves their power over the faithful intact; but the Church reserves the right to take away this potver by sentence in certain circumstances—which will be those obtaining in a consecrational regime. In his commentary on the Secunda Secundae (1511-1517), Cajetan, who is certainly thinking of the Indians of the New World, very strongly insists on the legitimacy of their political status, and on the injustice of making war on them simply because they are pagans: “There may be unbelievers who arc not under the temporal jurisdiction of Christian princes, either in right or in fact. For example, the pagans who were never subjects of the Roman Empire, and those who inhabit lands where the Christian name is unkown. The governments of these peoples, albeit unbelieving, are legitimate, whether they be of the royal or democratic form. Their unbelief does not do away with their jurisdiction over their subjects, since the dominium arises from positive law, and infidelity is of the divine law which does not annul human his quae meliora σeduntur, amplius diligantur; nreesse est miseria consequatur, et quae inerat augeatur” (lib. XV, cap. iv). H 1 To those who try to explain the appalling cruelty of the German wars against the Slavs by the fact that the Slavs, who were pagans, could not but seem to Christians as without rights and excluded from the work! order, Karl Erdmann replies that the sole text of Otto I which we possess makes no allusion to the paganism of his adversaries. He adds that the Chronicles arc no tenderer to the Polish Sias's, who were Christians. What was then taken into consideration was not religion, whether pagan or Christian, nor yet the character of Slav or German, but citizenship of the Empire; and when the Emperor bad to mediate, he tried first to establish on which side lay the right {Die Entstehmg des Kreuzzugsçtdankens, Stuttgart 1935, pp. 91-94). About the same time the Chronicle of Salerno speaks of repeated alliances between Christians and Moslems, and it attributes a defeat suffered by the Salemites to the fact that they had broken their pledged word to the Moslems (ibid., p. 98). 1 Π-II, q. IO, a. to. 1q. 12, a. 2: “ Infidelitas secundum seipsam non repugnat dominio. 226 CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER law, as St. Thomas explains (II—II, q. io, a. io). No king, no emperor, not even the Roman Church,1 has any right to make war on the pagans to take possession of their lands or to subject them temporally. No pretext for a just war is here discoverable, since Jesus Christ, the King of kings, to whom all power is given in heaven and on earth, did not send soldiers or armies to conquer the world, but holy preachers, like sheep among wolves. And so, even under the Old Law, though that was the time of armed conquest, I do not see that any war was declared against any people simply because they were infidels. It was declared against peoples who refused passage, or who had first attacked the people of Israel, or who detained what did not belong to them. We should therefore sin grievously if we undertook to spread the faith of Christ by such means. Not only should we not be legitimate masters of the peoples thus conquered, but we should be guilty of great robberies, and we should be bound to make restitution like all those who have unjustly occupied or conquered a country. We must send these peoples, not conquerors who oppress them, scandalise them, enslave them and make them twice the child of hell more than themselves (Matt, xxiii. 15), but holy preachers capable of con­ verting them to God by their word and by their example.”12 Taking his stand on the authority of St. Thomas and of Cajetan, Francis of Vittoria was to affirm in 1532, in his lectures at Salamanca, that infidelity, in itself, does away neither with public nor private dominion; that Saracens, Jews and other infidels are therefore true proprietors, just as much as Christians, and that to despoil them is simply to be guilty of theft and rapine;3 that the Barbarians, that is the Indians of the New World, in spite of their infidelity and the many mortal sins they indulge in, are legitimate princes and legitimate proprietors, so that Christians can find no justification in this infidelity and sin for taking possession of their country and stealing their goods.4 And this was also to be the doctrine of the man who deserved to be called the Father of the Indians, the Dominican, Las Casas. In a treatise published at Seville in January 1553, he protested with the greatest energy, and a typically Spanish violence, against the theoreticians in the pay of the Conquistadores, who pretended that since the Indians were un­ believers their goods and lands passed at once to the Christians: “Those who say that Christ, by coming into the world, has, ipso jure, deprived the infidels of all authority, independence, sovereignty and jurisdiction, are uttering absurdities, contrary to all reason, unworthy of the intelligence of a peasant, scandalous, infamous, unworthy of the name of Christian. They bear false witness against Jesus and dishonour Him. There is no greater 1 That is, the Pope as head or protector of the temporal order. 3 In 11-11, q. 66, a. 8. The five Dominicans—among them Peter of Cordoba and Antony de Montesinos—whom Cajetan, then General of the Order, sent towards the end of 1509 to San Domingo were truly apostolic men. cf. Touron, Histoire générale de ΓAmérique depuis sa découverte, Paris 1769, vol. I, p. 213. 3 “ De Indis Recenter Inventis ”, sect. 1, no. 7 (De Indis el de Jure Belli Relectiones, Carnegie Institution of Washington 1917, p. 226). 4 ibid., no. 19, p. 229. 227 S THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE obstacle to the preaching of the Gospel. If Christ came to fulfil all justice He could by no means rob men of their natural rights. With this impious and detestable opinion, they make the Church a liar, they are guilty of heresy and sacrilege, and those who maintain it ought to be burnt alive, since it is contrary to Scripture and the doctrine of the Church.”1 It is therefore clear, according to the doctrine which may be called traditional, that unbelievers, if they were outside Christendom, were not on that account outside the law; and that their juridical status had to be respected by Christians.3 3- J; .» THE ABSOLUTE INVIOLABILITY OF THE NATURAL RIGHTS AND CONSCIENCE OF UNBELIEVERS I. We need then say no more of pagan princes governing their pagan subjects. But a little further on we shall have to return to the case of the pagan prince whose subjects have become Christian, and still more especially to the case of the Christian prince who turns unbeliever. For, according to St. Thomas, although in such circumstances the prince does not, ipsofacto, lose his power, the Church can nevertheless take it away from him by sentence. It remains to say here that whatever may have been the civil condition of infidels living in Christendom—of pagans, Saracens, Jews and so on—it was never permissible to invade their natural rights.3 And so St. Thomas, who here appeals to the custom of the Church, forbids the baptism of young children ofJews and other unbelievers without the consent of their parents.4 This teaching of St. Thomas—rejected by Scotus, who maintains that a prince would act well in ordering the baptism of all his subjects’ children, whether Jews or infidels3—continued to prevail in the Church. It was sanctioned 1 Cited by Marcel Brion, Barthotent de Las Casas, Paris 1927, p. 238. Already, at the Council of Constance when the Teutonic Order preached a “ Crusade ” against Poland and Lithuania, still partly pagan, the Poles had opposed the thesis, affirming the right of all peoples, even pagan, to their territorial independence, and proclaimed that Christ's doctrine ought to be spread abroad by means compatible with charity, cf. O. Haiecki, La Pologne de 963 à 1914, Paris 1933, p. tot. The baneful state of mind into which the military Orders sank would make a useful historical study. 1 One can see in J. Dutilleul, Diet, de theoL caih., art. “ Esclavage ”, col. 486-503, how this tradi­ tional doctrine was alternately proclaimed and obscured in the deplorable history of slavery in America. 1 “Jews are bondsmen of the princes by’ civil bondage which does not exclude the order of natural and divine law ’ (St. Thomas, II—II* q. 10, a. 12, ad 3; and III, q. 68, a. 10, ad 2). * Π-II, q. to, a. 12; Ill, q. 68. a. 10. 1 On condition, says Scotus, “ that the thing is done prudently, so that the children are not killed beforehand by their parents, and can receive a Christian education. z\nd further,” he adds, “ I believe that it would be a religious act to force the parents themselves, minii et terroribus, to receive baptism and to fulfil their obligations; for, even if they were not sincere, it would be a lesser evil for them to be unable to conform to an illicit religion with impunity, than to observe it freely. And their children, being well brought up, would, at the third or fourth generation, be true Chris­ tians ” (ZP Sent., dist. 4, q. 9, no. 2). In No. i, Scotus at first denies, in agreement with the whole of tradition, that die young children of Jews and infidels can be baptized in spite of their parents. But he goes on to say that this interdiction is valid only for private persons: it does not concern the prince, whose authority will outweigh that of the parents when it is a question of applying a divine law. Note that Scotus’ argumentation (1) supposes bad faith in the unbelievers, and, (2) disregards the intangibility of natural rights by the prince. 228 CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER notably by a Bull ofjulius III, dated 8th June 1551,1 and by Benedict XIV’s letter Postremo Mensae of 28th February 1747.1 For the same reason, unbelievers, even when they arc subjects of Christian princes, are not to be compelled to enter the Church. The Decretum of Gratian (Part I, dist. 45, ch. 3) transcribes a letter addressed to Paschasius, Bishop of Naples, in which Pope St. Gregory forbids the disturbance of Jewish worship: “If with a right intention you would lead non-Christi ans to the true faith, you must use persuasion and not violence. For minds that might easily be enlightened by your explanations will be estranged by your hostility. All who, under colour of snatching men from false cults, go about it differently, show that they seek their own will rather than God’s.”3 In Chapter 5 the Decretum reports the 57th Canon of the fourth national Council of Toledo in 633, concerning the Jews. As for those who had already been compelled to become Christian in the reign of Sisebut, and had received the sacraments, they should remain Christian, and the question of the validity of these extorted conversions should not be reopened. But “for the future, no one is to be constrained to believe. For the Lord hath mercy on whom he will, and whom he will he hardeneth (Rom. ix. 18). The Jews are not to be saved in spite of themselves, but freely, so that all justice be safeguarded. Conversions are to be made by consent, not constraint, by persuasion, not force.”4 Towards 1190, Clement III forbade “anyone to compel the Jews to receive Baptism against their will ”, and towards 1250 Innocent IV 1 Reproduced in the Decretals, lib. VII, tit. i, cap i. 2 “ The opinion of St. Thomas,” says Benedict XIV, ” has prevailed in the tribunals, and it is the commonest among theologians and canonists” (Denz. 1482). It is curious to note how the doctrine of St. Thomas, faithfully explained by Capreolus (II ' Sent,, dist. 5 and 6), is attenuated in several of his best disciples. Cajetam, for example, granting hypothetically the legitimacy of serf­ dom, considers that the children of serfs (and of Jews who are serfs of the Church), since they can be taken from their parents and sold, can similarly be baptized in spite of their parents; but, he adds, God would not have the Church resort to such means, and that is all that St. Thomas meant (In II-II, q. 10, a. 12, nos. 8-10). Francis of Vittoria say’s that Christians would not go beyond their rights in baptizing the children of infidels against their parents’ wishes, provided there was no scandal and no danger of apostasy; in this sense, he holds, Scotus is in the right. Everybody grants that in wartime the infidels may be killed and their children taken from them; why then not bap­ tized? However, adds Vittoria, the two conditions indicated are unrealizable in practice. Would not the Saracens be scandalized and say that Christianity prevailed by violence, and not by miracles? And how avoid the peril of apostasy if the children are left within reach of their parents? To take them away altogether could not be done without endangering life, and a return to Islam would be always to be feared. So that absolutely speaking, not doubtless as a matter of natural right, but at any rate on the authority of the Church, we must answer with St. Thomas, that the children of unbelievers are not to be baptized against the will of their parents (In II-II, q. 10, a. 12, nos. 8-10). St. Thomas then, as we see, affirms, much more clearly than his commentators, the inviolability of the rights of parents even as against Christian princes. 3 Epist., lib. XIII, epist. 12; P.L. LXXVII, 1267: “ — suas illi magis quam Dei causas probantur attendere.” 4 It must, I am afraid, be added that the sixth national Council of Toledo, held in 638, by desire of King Chintila, gave thanks to God in its third Canon inasmuch as the King had just issued an edict ordering all die Jews to quit Spain, so that there should be none but Catholics in the land; in agreement with the King and the nobles the Council prescribed that all future kings should keep these ordinances in force (Hcfelc-Leclcrq, Histoire des conciles, vol. Ill, p. 279). In fact the Jews were to occupy a privileged place in Arab Spain, and this continued for some time under the first Chris­ tian kings. 229 ί !! j THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE reminded the Archbishop of Arles of the same principles: “It is contrary to the Christian religion that any man, without willing it, and in spite of his absolute opposition, should be forced to become and remain a Christian.”1 Shortly afterwards, St. Thomas was writing in the Sumina that “as for un­ believers who have never received the faith, such as the heathens and the Jews, they are by no means to be compelled to the faith in order that they may believe, because to believe depends on the will”. When Christians wage war on unbelievers, “it is not for the purpose of forcing them to believe, because even if they were to conquer them and take them prisoners, they should still leave them free to believe if they will ; but in order to prevent them from hindering the faith of Christ”.1 Finally, the Council of Trent declared that “the Church never passes judgment on anyone who has not yet come into her by the door of baptism.”3 2. To sum up: the medieval Church, as such, regarded the natural rights of pagans as inviolable. She did not wish their children to be baptized against their will, nor that they themselves should be compelled to believe. That applies in the first place to the unbelievers outside the Church who had a proper juridical status recognized by Christians. It cannot be denied that in the course of centuries writers appeared who hoped for the destruction of paganism by fire and sword, and made it a duty for princes to wage war on the pagans and compel them to believe;1 but it is impossible to maintain that they express the authentic thought of the Church. It applies also, naturally, to unbelieving ethnic groups, Slavs or Moors, 1 These texts are recorded in the Decretals: the first in lib. V, tit. vi, cap. ix; the second in lib. Ill, * II-II, q. 10, a. 8. Here again some of St. Thomas’ disciples are hardly faithful to him. Vittoria begins by distinguishing unbelievers who are not subject to Christian princes, or who have volun­ tarily submitted to them on condition that their religion should be respected: neither class is to be constrained to Baptism. As to unbelievers who are subject to a Christian prince, by* right, for example, of a just war, Vittoria agrees with Scotus that taking the action in itself the prince would do well to force them, minis et terroribus ft taberibas, to accept, to hold, and to defend the faith; but he adds that speaking absolutely, on account of the difficulties that would result, such action ought to be avoided. One feels the presence of the principle that became famous in the days of the Reform­ ation*. cujus regio illius religio. ” I do not know*,” he says, “ whether it is a good thing that the Saracens have been compelled to the faith in our days, and have been given the choice between conversion and banishment from Spain. They have often chosen conversion, and that is why there arc so many bad Christians. I should not hesitate to declare that if a whole city, such as Con­ stantinople, came to the faith, and if there remained only thirty or forty persons refusing conver­ sion, they ought to be compelled to follow the majority. And I should not hesitate to say likewise, that if the Grand Turk were converted to the faith, he could constrain his subjects, under penalties, to become Christians ... All that of course on condition that the constraint led neither to dissi­ mulation or to some greater evil ’* {In II-II, q. 10. a. 8, nos. 3-6). Billuart, on the contrary, was to be faithful to his master: “ Unbelievers who have never had the faith, whether they are, or are not, subjects of Christian princes, are in no wise to be compelled to believe ” {De Fide, dissert. 5, a. 2). To return to the case proposed by Vittoria, of a city which, with the exception of a small minority, should seek incorporation with a Christendom of the medieval type, there would be two ways of being just to the minority: either recourse to religious pluralism; or to expatriation, conceived however as an expropriation serving public utility, and indemnified. ’Session XIV, De Poenitentia, cap. II. 4 Karl Erdmann cites, among others, Firmicus Maternus and Bruno of Qucrfurt {Die Entstehimg des Kreuzzugsgedankens, pp. 4 and 97). 23O S3 CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER allied with Christian princes, and, on that account, more or less incorporated into Christendom. But it also applies even to unbelievers deprived of juridical status and reduced to bondage, for example, by a just war. If we grant that even these arc not to be constrained to Baptism wc shall be led to a solution of the pluralist type—the permission of more than one religion—especially if their numbers arc considerable. There will be toleration for their rites and their manner of serving God. That, says St. Thomas, is the practice of the Church.1 Undoubtedly there were theologians who, in such circumstances, would concede the right of Christian princes to impose the faith on un­ believers. But they did not express the true thought of the Church; and the later theological development, to which Benedict XIV is a witness, followed a different direction. They were careful for the most part to speak with reserve. Francis of Vittoria himself found it difficult to approve the measure by which, in 1502, the Moors of Spain were forced to choose between con­ version and exile. Any political chief who forced a religion on his subjects would be stigmatized as a tyrant to-day by all theologians. And how could Christianity be forced on anyone without opening the door to sacrilege, and, notably, the worst of all, to sacrilege against the Eucharist?® It is indeed astonishing that this last consideration which, unfortunately, has nothing chimerical about it,3 did not prevail in the minds of theologians of the calibre of Scotus and Afittoria. C. The Juridical Condition of the Jews in Medieval Christendom Religious liberty, which had been taken from the Jews after 135 and restored to them by the Antonines, was in principle respected and guaranteed by the Cliristian Emperors. But it is clear that from the moment when the Empire was reconstructed on the basis of unity of faith, it could no longer welcome on an equal footing those Jews who, from the beginning, had shown themselves to be fierce adversaries of the Christians, and who intended to preserve their autonomy as a religious and ethnic group. Constantine saw 1 And she acted so, he says, not only in the case of pagans, but even at times in that of heretics (II—II, q. 10, a. n). ’ Sacrilege against the Eucharist is not merely the gravest of sacrileges that can be committed against holy things ; it is, says Cajetan, “ the gravest of all sacrileges, since it is a direct offence against the humanity of Christ contained in this sacrament; so that if wc look at the species of the sin it is worse to injure the Eucharist than it is to assassinate the Pope ” (In II-II, q. 99, a. 4, no. 8). ’The Crypto-Jcws, who at tunes amounted to notable fractions ofJewry, so well understood how to pass themselves off for non-Jcws, that many peoples took them for Christians (or Mohammedans). This is what we learn, says Sombart, concerning Jews of Hispano-Portuguese origin who inhabited the South of France during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and even later (and this applies equally to the Marranos of die Iberian peninsula and elsewhere): the)’ obeyed all the external practices of the Cadiolic religion; dieir births, marriages and deaths were entered on the registers of the Church; and they were given the Christian sacraments of Baptism, Marriage and Extreme Unction. Some even became priests (The Jews and Modern Capitalism, London 1913, pp 8-9). In his Letter concerning Apostasy, Maimonides had justified the Jews who simulated conversion to Islam; he was imitated by many Rabbis, cf. Felix Vernet, “Juifs et chrétiens ”, in Diet, apolog. de la foi cathol., col. 1677 and 1679. 23I . .. j - ?·. THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE i»· ■ r N t. I them as people who had to be kept at arm’s length. His successors, whose laws were incorporated in the Theodosian Code in the fifth century and in Justinian’s in the seventh, while recognizing the Jewish religion as lawful, sought to favour the Christians and to keep them free from contamination by forbidding die Jews to build new synagogues, to marry Christian women, to convert Christians, to have Christian servants in their houses, and so on. It should be remarked that these laws were not in force for very long through­ out the whole Empire, which was now beginning to crumble.1 The barbarian princes adapted the Roman legislation to their kingdoms with more or less strictness. At intervals, the severity of the laws was equalled or surpassed; thus Dagobert I in France (630) and Siscbut in Spain (612-613) ordered the Jews to receive Baptism under pain of exile. To the extent to which the principle of nationality asserted itself the Jcw’ish dislike of fusion with the indigenous element drew stronger resentments on their heads. Their position in Spain during the century preceding the Arab invasion was very precarious? Then were held those Councils of Toledo so remarkable for their dogmatic definitions on the Trinity and the Incarnation, but of which it has been said, in respect of their practical ordinances, that they were 'Tess Councils than national assemblies of the Spanish monarchy, content to do no more, or little more, than register the decrees of their sovereigns”. Gratian records several of their canons in the Decretum, and the severe spirit in which they were couched was to leave its mark on ecclesiastical legislation? Charlemagne was rather less hard on the Jew's. But from the thirteenth century to the end of the fifteenth their situation grew worse. Although in certain cities they achieved remarkable prosperity, they were banished successively from England, from France, from a large part of Germany, and then, in 1492, from Spain, where since 1480 the Inquisition, founded by the Catholic kings, functioned chiefly against the Marranos; and finally, in 1496, from Portugal? They emigrated to Italy, Poland, the Ottoman Empire, and later to Holland and England. 'Felix Vernet, loc. dt., col. 1713-1714. Note that a Christian legislation, while supporting Christianity, had to be careful nevertheless not to put any premium on conversion. 1 loc. dt., cot 1714 1 loc. du, coL 1727. Père Bonsùven is also severe on the Visigothic laws: “They were almost all carried or confirmed in the Counrils of Toledo, which amounted to the Parliament of the kingdom. We have here a very dear case of the subjection of the Church to the political power, a deplorable example of the handing over of spiritual arms to the State. Several unfortunate consequences followed. The bishops often had to make or sanction canons which contradicted principles as essential as that of freedom of belief and respect for consdenccs. They’ made themselves the servants oi a political order that was barbarous, and. when all is said and done, antichristian. The result was, not to increase the number of the faithful, but to dilute them with innumerable hypocrites. Thus they inaugurated a regime of supervision of consdenccs, a spiritual police, wholly contrary to that spirit of liberty which ought to characterize a religion of the spirit. Did they not thereby open the door to the Spanish Inquisition, which took over and enslaved the ecclesiastical power for the benefit of the political? Did they not also sow on Spanish soil the first seeds of that fanatical and intolerant spirit which time and again has ravaged the Peninsula? ” (Notes taken at the Con· ftrout* on Judaism, held at the Institut Catholique de Paris, VIIth conference.) 4 “The offidal expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Portugal,” writes Sombart, “did not at once put an end to their history in those countries. Many Jews remained as pretended Christians 232 I CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER 1. THE JEWS TOLERATED, NOT IN THE CHURCH BUT IN CHRISTENDOM As long as they were not converted, the Jews, in medieval Christendom, by reason of their ethnico-rcligious autonomy, functioned as an alien body embedded in an organism. From the standpoint of the Christian faith, their religion appeared as a kind of infidelity—less grave than heresy, since it was not a repudiation of the Christian faith.1 That is the original meaning of the phrasc “perfidia judaïca”.2 Now the Church, as such, that is to say Christianity, the spiritual kingdom, can cheerfully tolerate sinful members within her, or again, a conflict of theological opinions, or the onerous conditions of a Concordat, and so on; but it is clear that she cannot tolerate infidelity in her own ranks, that her task is to fight it with all the spiritual weapons the Saviour has placed in her hands. The Church, however, can readily agree that Christian princes, Christen­ dom, the temporal kingdoms, should put a certain pluralism into practice in respect of other religious groups, and tolerate, for example, the exercise of infidel cults. Religious tolerance is then realized and takes effect on the plane of temporal life. Political rulers, the princes of the Christian states, or of the states of the Church, will accordingly admit the Jews to their territor)' under certain conditions, and will guarantee them the free exercise of their worship; they may act likewise with regard to other non-Christian peoples, Moslem populations for example, whom they may have subjugated in a just war. 2. THE SPECIAL REASON FOR THIS TOLERANCE: THE MYSTERY OF ISRAEL In the case of the Jews, says St. Thomas, there is, it is true, a special reason for toleration.3 For their worship prefigured the Christian faith; they bear witness, in spite of themselves, to its truth; their remnants are to be saved at the end of time. What lies at the bottom of the Jewish question is the mystery of Israel. The Saviour pointed to this mystery when He predicted “the hardening of the hearts of the Jews (Matt, xii, 41; xiii. 12; xxiii. 36), the conversion of the Gentiles in default of the Jews (Matt. xxii. (Marranos), and it was only under the pressure of the Inquisition, whose severity increased under Philip III, that they were obliged to leave the country; many of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews did not emigrate till well into the sixteenth century and towards its end." Many Jews likewise remained in England after the expulsion of 1290, and were still there till the time of their more or less official return under Cromwell. Sombart, as is well known, was struck by the parallelism he saw between the displacement of the Jews on the one side and that of the economic centre of gravity of Europe on the other (The Jews and Modem Capitalism, London 1913, ch. ii, pp. 13 et scq.), ’ Cf. St. Thomas, ΙΙ-Π, q. 10, a. 5. * It was only later that it acquired the sense of “ perfidy ", when the Jews were accused of insin­ cere conversions and treasonable relations with the enemies of the Christians, cf. Vemct, loc. cit., col. 1733. On the philological meaning of the expression and the custom of omitting the genu­ flexion in the prayer for the Jews on Good Friday since the ninth century, see Erik Peterson, " Perfidia judaïca ", in Ephemerides Liturgicae, 1936, p. 296 ct scq. This omission, due perhaps to a mere liturgical displacement, has been interpreted as a protest against the sacrilegious genuflexions of the Praetorium, for which the primary responsibility was placed on the Jews. ’“Aliquod bonum quod ex eis provenit” (Π-ΙΙ, q. 10, a. 11). 233 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE 8; xxiv. 14), and the final conversion of the Jews (Matt, xxiii. 3g). ”1 for the Christians of the Gentile world St. Paul unveils the profound signi­ ficance of these prophecies (Rom. ix-xi). He reminds them first that the Old Testament prophecies have not been falsified, since they are realized in the spiritual Israel, the Church: “Not as though the word of God hath miscarried, for all are not Israelites that arc of Israel” (ix. 6). Then he considers the lot of carnal Israel, the Jewish people. Their rejection is full of mystery and their prerogatives remain astonishing: the offence of the Jews becomes the riches of the world: it hastens the conversion of the Gentiles, and that will one day provoke a salutary'jealousy in the Jew's. “ I say then: have they so stumbled that they should fall ? God forbid. But by their offence salvation is come to the Gentiles,5 that they may' be emulous of them. Now if the offence of them be the riches of the world, and the diminution of them the riches of the Gentiles: how much more the fullness of them?” (Rom. xi. 12). They are and always will be, in a way, a people consecrated to God, dedicated to God; and if the nations are in the Church as a wild olive grafted on a good tree, they too will one day be in her as on their own olive tree. “If the root be holy, so are the branches. And if some of the branches be broken, and thou, being a wild olive, art engrafted in them, and art made partakers of the root and of the fatness of the olive tree: boast not against the branches ... If thou wert grafted into the good olive tree, how much more shall they, that are the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree?” (16-24). they continue as a people in spite of their dispersion, it is that they may be one day re-integrated in the Church. “I would not have you ignorant, brethren, of this mystery . . . that blindness in part has happened in Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles should come in. And so all Israel should be saved” (25-26). Then, as their rejection had provoked the reconciliation of the Gentiles, their re-integration will provoke a resurrection of the dead (15). It is therefore clear that they arc still the people of God, somewhat as a rebellious son remains a son, and an apostate priest remains a priest, in virtue of an election which, for all their refusal of the Gospel, remains irrevocable: “As concerning the gospel indeed they arc enemies for your sake; but as touching the election they' are most dear for the sake of the fathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are without repentance” (2B-29). The nature of the mystery that weighs upon Israel according to the flesh can be glimpsed: it is the mystery of a people chosen for the purpose of inaugurating the Church and refusing the grace of the Church, but whose lot remains bound up with that of the Church. It marks in reverse the theme traced through history by the Church in relief. This 1 M.-J. Lagrange, O.P. Étitre aux Romain:, 1916, p. 284. 1 “ It is a statement of fact. Paul, seeing himself repulsed by the Jews, turned to the Gentiles (Acts xiii, 45-48), who are put in the way of salvation all the sooner. And if the Jews had been converted en masse would they have consented to renounce their law? Would Christianity have been freed from national observances, and so become a suitable religion for the Gentiles? The learned of our day are entirely in agreement with Paul, that the refusal of the Jews facilitated the entry of the Gentiles." Lagrange, op. cit., p. 275. 234 CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER people, primarily no doubt in its books, but also in its flesh, is the bearer of prophecies.1 There was therefore a special reason to tolerate it in medieval Christendom, but this tolerance had to be prudently hedged about. The Jews could exercise their religion, but proselytism was forbidden them, the publicity of their worship was reduced/ and the number of their synagogues limited.3 And when, between 1238 and 1240, the blasphemies of the Talmud against Christ were discovered, the book was ordered to be burnt? 3- THE CIVIL STATUS OF THE JEWS These restrictions on their worship did not, as we have pointed out, touch the natural rights of the Jews. Their children could not be taken from them nor Baptism forced on them. The dilemma of conversion or exile, although it survived a long time in the practice of princes or of certain bishops, was condemned even by one of the national Councils of Toledo.5 The general teaching of the Church is clear.® 'That is a traditional view. It is found in St. Augustine: “Today, if the Jews are dispersed through all nations and lands, that is due to God’s design; so that if the idols, altars, sacred groves and temples arc destroyed all over the earth and the sacrifices forbidden, it could still be seen from the Jewish books that all this was prophesied long ago; and although the prophecies, fulfilled in the Christian religion, may be read also in our own holy books, no one can accuse us of having composed them ourselves after the event ” (De Civitate Dei, lib. IV, cap. xxxiv). In St. Thomas we find: “The books of the Jews are witnesses everywhere for Christ and the Church, for when the heathen read them in the Jewish books they could not imagine that the prophecies concerning Christ had been fabricated by the Christian preachers” (In Epist. ad Rom., cap. xi, lect. 2). cf. Pascal: “ They lovingly and faithfully preserved this book in which Moses declares that they have been ungrateful to God all their lives, that he knows that they wall be still more so after his death; but that he calls heaven and earth to witness against them, and that he has done all he can to teach them ” (Pensées). Reduced to essentials, this argument means that on the religious plane Israel appears to have fallen from the high part marked out for it by the prophecies, and that this spiritual downfall visibly influences its historical and worldly destinies. But if Israel survives the dispersion, it is because it is destined, by divine decree, to re-integration. 1 They were forbidden to carry the Bible or the Ark in procession in the ghetto. At Rome they were obliged to listen to a Christian sermon on the Old Testament (F. Vemet, loc. cit., col. 1739 and 1738). cf. the remark of Erik Peterson, (Le mystère des Juifs et des Gentils, Paris, pp. 54 and 72) who connects this preaching with that of Stephen during his martyrdom. 3 ■' Two canons of the Deaelals, lib. V, tit. vi, caps, iii and vii, the one taken from St. Gregory the Great, the other from Pope Alexander III (1180), rule that, although the Jews are not to be disturbed in the possession of their synagogues, they must not build any more. Alexander authorises the necessary' repairs and rebuilding, provided that the synagogues arc not made larger or richer than in the past. Paul IV decreed that they could have only one synagogue in each town or place they inhabited. The Popes did not hesitate to dispense, when they judged it useful, from the pre­ scriptions of the Deaetals and of Paul IV. Basnage tells us that in his time there were nine syna­ gogues at Rome, nineteen in the Roman Campagna, thirty'-six in the March of Ancona, twelve in the Patrimony of St. Peter, eleven at Bologna and thirteen in the Romandiola ” (F. Vernet, loc. cit., col. 1739). * ibid., col. 1691. 5 Fourth Council, canon 57, cited above, p. 229. • “ The Deaetals, lib. V, tit. vi, cap. Lx, contain, under the name of Clement III (1190), a Bull which could be called the charter ofJewish liberties. It forbids baptism without consent, wounding, killing, interference with their goods and their good customs, disturbance of the celebration of their feasts, exaction of forced senices above existing usage, restriction or invasion of their cemeteries or exhumation of their dead obtentu pecuniae. All this under pain of excommunication. The first phrase ‘ Sicut Judaeis . . .’ and the greater part of the provisions of this Bull were borrowed from Gregory the Great. It seems, from the Formulary of Marino of Eboli, that the first Pope who pro­ mulgated it in its complete form was Nicholas II (|ιο6ι). It was renewed by Calixtus II, Eugenius 235 « ) « THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE But from the civic point of àrw, the rights of the Jews, like those of other unbelievers, were strictly limited. They were forbidden to exercise any public functions, a prohibition that applied also to Saracens;1 for how could those who rejected the mystery of Christ be given the direction of a society composed of Christians alone?2 If the feudal regime hardly allowed them to become great proprietors they could at any rate hold landed property and let it to agricultural workers, who, however, could neither cat nor lodge with them;3 but neither they nor the Saracens could have Christian slaves in their houses, since their faith would be endangered? A Jew' could neither buy nor keep in sendee any of the baptized, nor any unbeliever asking for Baptism; if he had bought for rc-salc any infidel seeking Baptism, he had to turn him over to Christians, subject to due compensation.4 The Jews were obliged, like the Saracens, to wear clothes that differed from those of the Christians, so as to hinder marriages and other close relations with Chris­ tians.* They grouped themselves, quite spontaneously to start with, in the same quarter of the town around their synagogue; but later on, in the fifteenth century, and especially in Spain and the Pontifical States, they were forcibly confined to these ghettos.7 4. HOW JUSTIFIED At the moment when it opted against its Messiah,8 the messianic people mysteriously and irremediably left the ways marked out for it by Providence. Ill, Alexander III, Clement III, Celestine HI, Innocent III, Honorius III, Gregory IX, Inno­ cent IV, Urban IV, Gregory X, Nicholas III, Honorius IV. Nicholas IV, Clement VI, Urban V, Boniface IX, Martin V, £ugenius IV, and perhaps others” (F. Vernet, loc. cit., col. 1736). 1 Canon 65 of the Fourth Council of Toledo, in 633. cf. Hcfele-Lederc, Histoire da conciles, vol. Ill, p. 275. This canon is inserted in the -Deor/icn, part II, cause 17, q. 4, c. 31. The bracketing ufJnvs with Saracens did not hold good always and everywhere. Alexander III, for example, wrote to the Bishops of Spain: “ The position of the Jews is not the same as that of the Saracens. These latter persecute the Christians, turn them out of their towns and lands, and it is quite proper to fight them. But the Jews are everywhere disposed to obey ” (Decretum II, cause 23, q. 8, c. 11). 1 Canon 69 of the Fourth Council of the Lateran, in 1215. cf. Histoire da conciles, vol. V, p. 1387. Inserted in the Decretals, lib. V, tit. vi, cap. xvi; cf. cap. xviii ...” In spile of these prohibitions, frequently renewed, and finally by Benedict XIV’, they sometimes became farmers of the taxes, toll collectors, treasurers to the princes, their representatives at foreign courts, magistrates in the South of France, and so on” (F. Vemet, op. cit., col. 1743). ’ Decretals, cap. ii. (F. Vernet, loc. dt., col. 1742). Following B. Lazare the author does not agree that the Jews were forced to live by usury (col. 1696). 4 Canon 26 of the Third Lateran Council, in 1179. cf. Histoire da conciles, vol. V, p. 1105; and Deaetab, cap. V. “ It would be more dangerous for unbelievers to have dominion or authority over the faithful than that they should be allowed to employ them in some craft. Wherefore the Church permits Christians to work on the land of the Jews because this docs not entail their living with them” (St. Thomas, II-II, q. 10, a. 10. ad 3). • Deartab, cap. xix. cf. St. Thomas, II-II, q. 10, a. to. • Canon 68 of the Fourth Council of the Lateran: Deaetals, cap. xv. At the end of the De Regi­ mine Judaeorum St. Thomas notes how dûs provision agrees with that of the Jewish law. 7 F. Vemet, loc. dt., col. 1740. “The institution appeared in Italy in the eleventh century; in the thirteenth the Emperor Frederick II put the Jews in a special quarter in his capital at Palermo. The closed Jewry' was set up in Spain in 1412 * (Joseph Bonsirven, Confirmas sur le Judaïsme, IXth Conference). • “ It knew not what it did; but its rulers knew very well that they were opting against God. In one of those acts of freewill which setdc the destinies of a community’, the priests of Israel the CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER Till the day of its reintegration in the Church dawns, Israel will be a disorientated and frustrated people, and the Jewish problem will find no solution. Was the mystery of Israel to be stamped on the secular history of this people, and thus to influence also the temporal destinies of the Jews? The ancients thought so.1 We may take them to task perhaps for looking at it a little too narrowly, Tor taking very accidental or even very dubious forms of “fulfilment” as the logical upshot of the prophecies. Thus the impossibility of incorporating the Jews in a constitutionally Christian society and the restrictions with which they had to be surrounded in a consecrational regime, seemed to be so many direct consequences of their primary deviation. And further, the state of servitude into which the Jews fell for various reasons after the Crusades2 was thought to be justified, in so far as it had become a part of the public law, by their initial transgression. Thence it comes that texts of Innocent III and of St. Thomas on the servitude of the Jews3 may bring together considerations of very unequal value, but following in strict sequence: the carnal Israel has preferred the religion of servitude to the religion of liberty (cf. Gal. iv. 21-30) ;4 it has departed from the ways of evil guardians of the vine, the slayers of the prophets, opted for the world from motives of political prudence, and the whole people was thenceforth bound by this option—until it should change it of itself ” (Jacques Maritain, Questions de Conscience, p. 61). cf. Bourdaloue’s sermon on scandals: “ But sins, you will tell me, are personal ... I agree . . . But scandal [in the sense of* leading astray ’] is an exception. Why? Because scandal is not a purely personal sin but a kind of original sin ”—which spills over and communicates itself to others. 1 In our own day, Sombart, without accepting the data of theology, tries to interpret the economic life of the Jews in the light of their religion. 8 During the first Crusade the Jews along the Rhine, reduced to desperate straits by bands of adventurers, appealed for help to the Emperor who protected them for a consideration, and they were called the serfs of the Imperial Household. In the course of time the right to hold the Jacs was granted, sometimes to towns, sometimes to nobles. Their dependence on the Emperor, writes S. Drploige, ” became stricter, their freedom to come and go was gradually reduced, and unauthor­ ised emigration was punished by general confiscation. The exchequer moreover made increased demands on them, and even their proprietary rights over their goods was ultimately questioned. In the thirteenth century this evolution had reached its term.’* In St. Thomas’ time the theory of the civil bondage of the Jews was firmly entrenched in public law. St. Thomas accepts the prin­ ciple but would moderate die application: the “necessaria vitae subsidia” are not to be taken from them, and they are not to be irritated by exactions greater than those of the past (F. Vernet» loc. cil., col. 1745-1746). Note that only the first and last points of the De Regimine Judaeorum treat of the relations of the prince with the Jews as such: die rest treat of the relations of the prince with usurers, and apply as against the Cahorsines and the Lombards. 3 “ Although Christian piety welcomes the Jews, subjected by their own fault to a perpetual servi­ tude . . .” This celebrated passage opens the decree of Innocent III forbidding the Jews to have Christian nurses for their children, on account of the ill-treatment inflicted on them (Decretals, lib. V, tit. vi, cap. xiii). St. Thomas refers to this text at the beginning of the De Regimine Judaeorum, where he seems to withhold his opinion: “ Licet, ut jura dicunt, Judaei, merito culpae suae, sint vel essent perpetuae servituti addicti . . . and elsewhere, for example II-II, q. io, a. n, ad 3. 4 In this passage St. Paul turns to the Bible itself to prove that what was always foreseen in the divine plan was not one perpetual covenant, but two successive covenants: first that of” slaves ” or of the spirit of fear, and then that of “ sons ” or of the spirit of liberty. The two cannot live side by side, for the first will injure the second; and one must cast out the other as in Scripture the son of thc-frcc-woman cast out the son of the bond-woman: cf. M.-J. Lagrange, O.P., Épilre aux 237 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE providence till the day of its re-integration (Rom. xi) ; it cannot mingle with a consecrational Christendom; the public law at the end of the Middle Ages considers it as in bondage. The origins of this bondage arc sometimes sought far back.1 In reality it had no other foundation than the actual laws of the period. 5- AN APPRECIATION OF THE MEDIEVAL SOLUTION The theologian is under no obligation to justify all the laws brought to bear on the Jews by provincial Councils or by the Popes, the latter, notably, as princes of the Pontifical States. * He is even less bound to take up the defence of all that was done in Christendom against the Jews. Medieval Christendom was an attempt at political organization under the sign of the Christian faith ; it was very far from making perfect application of the princi­ ples of the Gospel on the plane of social and political life. We must realize however that the Papacy always aimed at keeping the Jewish problem clear of the political or religious passions that obscured it, and at bringing it back to its essentials. The measures the Popes adopted to regulate the activities of the Jews and to limit their influence, were dictated by the need to maintain the basic principle of the political constitution of the West. They belonged to the logic of a consecrational conception of the temporal order which, by definition, granted the quality of citizenship to Christians alone.3 Doubtless GalakJ, 1918, pp. 118-122. To this thought, the Epistle to the Romans adds the prophecy relating to the later destinies of Israel, its character as people of God in spite of, and even in the midst of, its straying, and the announcement of its general return to the faith. 1 *· A theory*, famous in Germany in the twelfth century’, and recorded in the Schwabtnspiegdt refers this bondage to a Roman origin: Titus gave Jewish prisoners to the Imperial treasury and they remained the property, the slaves, of the Empire. That is a mere historical fantasy’ long ago discarded ” (F. Vernet, loc. dL, col. 1745). It is to be found in Francis of Vittoria, In II-U, q. 10, a. 12, no. t6: Christendom, the heir of the Roman Empire, triumphed over the Jews by the arms and in the persons of the Emperors Titus and Vespasian. 2 It was at the time of the Reformation, when Jewish activity became more dangerous, that the Popes took the strictest measures against them. In 1555 Paul IV obliged all the Jews in the Ponti­ fical State to sell all their real estate; and condemned them, moreover, to the seclusion of the ghetto. In 1569 St. Pius V extended this last ordinance to the whole of Christendom; and, a new departure, expelled the Jews from all his States except Rome and Ancona. In 1581 Gregory XIII decreed that for certain offences the Jews could be punished by the Inquisition: “ Practically speaking, the Inquisition hardly took notice of anything save re-Judaizing and ownership of the Talmud; it was the former alone, or almost so, that prompted the severities of the Inquisition of Spain; while proceedings against the Talmud bore rather on the book, which was burnt, than on persons.*' Sixtus V w*as more lenient. In 1586 he repealed the edict of expulsion. He revalidated the ordinances made in the past in favour of the Jewish bankers in Rome and tolerated lending at very high rates of interest. Clement VIII tried to revive the tradition of Paul EV and of St. Pius V. He suppressed usury. He expelled the Jew’s again; but had to rescind this decision three months later. After his time the Popes attempted no further expulsions (F. Vernet, loc. cit., cols. 1702, »729. 1731)· θη subject of the “ surprising permission'* granted by Clement VII to the bankers of Imola, to lend at upwards of thirty or forty per cent, the same author recalls that the Pope was in great need of money to cope with the lamentable situation created by the sack of Rome in 1527; and he adds: “ if his benevolent measures towards Israel are to be thus explained, as is probably the case, and if they were spontaneous, his gratitude was extreme; if they were forced on him by the lenders, they imposed conditions that were truly draconian*’ (ibid., col. 1701). 2 In his conferences on Judaism, in which he strongly insists on the wrongs inflicted by Christians on the Jews, Père Bonsirven would not have them made the ground for a judgment on the general 238 CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER they did not amount to the solution of the Jewish problem. They were but a solution, a political and provisional compromise. “The Middle Ages tried out a consecrational solution, in conformity with the typical structure of the contemporary civilisation. This solution, the solution of the ghetto, based on the fact of a divine chastisement hanging over Israel, and giving the Jews the status of foreigners in the Christian society, was of its nature hard, and in application often iniquitous and ferocious; it proceeded however from a lofty idea . . .; of the religious order, and nowise racial, it recognized the privilege of the soul, and the Jew, when baptized, entered as of right into the full convivium of the Christian society. This medieval solution has passed away to return no more, like the type of civilization from which it sprang.”1 Where this medieval solution is concerned, we must make a careful distinction between (i) a modus vivendi political by nature, which was, obviously, imperfect, but which, permitting as it did the peace­ ful living side by side of Jews and Christians, by the same token was a good, and which the Church could in consequence approve as valid in the temporal order·, {2} the vexations and iniquities which the Jews suffered at the hands of the Christians, whether rulers or subjects, clerics or laymen, in the practical application of this modus vivendi, and which, in consequence, the Church as such has never accepted as her own responsibility. The political emancipation of the Jews began in Holland in the seventeenth century, and then spread to England. “The young United States of America recognized the political equality of Je wish citizens ... In 1791 the French Revolution granted the status of active citizens to the Jews, but on condition that they renounced all national particularism. The other states, except Russia, followed this example sooner or later. The Jew need not any longer be an object of contempt. The importance of the Jews in the world became conduct of the Church. He sums the matter up in four points, following the preamble of the Bull of Pope Martin V: “ (i) The Church considers the Jews as unbelievers whose obstinacy she de­ plores; (2) she wishes their rights and privileges to be respected; (3) she works to defend the faith of her own children against them; (4) and does her best to convert them without infringing their liberty ” (Seventh Conference). A little further on, dealing with the legislation of the Fourth Lateran Council, he writes: " On the whole these laws, with all their discriminations, so painful to us now, were simply part of the measures which a Christian society then took to safeguard its members, their faith and their dignity. Various historians have rightly observed that these legis­ lations were inspired by the spirit and letter of the Mosaic codes, since for the Christians of this period the Old Testament was still a compendium of divine ordinances valid for all time. It is equally right to remark that the majority of the limitations on the liberty of foreigners were similarly imposed by the traditional Jewish law, as wc find it in the Talmud, on Gentiles and on pagans, as threatening the religion and life of the Jews. And it has to be added that many of these prescrip­ tions were often lost sight of and violated in practice, and had to be promulgated anew. It was not only people and princes who made light of ecclesiastical prohibitions; several Popes either abrogated precautions taken by their predecessors, or took no notice of them ** (Eleventh Con­ ference). ’Jacques Maritain, Qi/cj/wnr de conscience, p. 85. Since the ghetto became obligatory only towards the fifteenth century the author here employs the word “ as symbolic of a certain politico-juridical conception". 239 •nili Ri Μ I THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE considerable. But the Jewish problem remains. How could religious libera­ lism provide the solution? It ignored on the one hand the mystery' of the Church on which hangs the notion of a truly human temporal order; and, on the other, it ignored the mystery of Israel, of the election that still rules the destinies of this people and will do so till the day of its conversion. Some notice will have to be taken of this two-fold datum if it is desired to fix the place of the Jews in the Christendom of the future.”1 D. The Position of Heretics The condition of heretics in the old consccrational Christendom was quite other than that of the Jews and of simple unbelievers. Instead of flourishing outside the Church like Judaism and paganism, heresy is an evil that infects her own subjects, those who belong to her fully and visibly; gaining on her like a cancer on its parent organism. The Church has then to fight in her own members against the seductions that carry them away. She can avail herself of canonical penalties to remind them of their former solemn promises and to save the rest of the faithful from apostasy. The common doctrine of the Church has always looked with very different eyes, first, from the speculative standpoint, on the infidelity of Jews and pagans as compared with that of heretics; and again, from the canonical standpoint, on those who have never been her members, as compared with those who at first were so and have fallen away. These considerations are valid for all ages. But in the Middle Ages the position of heretics had a special significance. In a society which never pretended to contain any but Christians, any but visible members of the Church, heresy loomed up unexpectedly as something anarchic, something capable of destroying the whole political and social structure from within. It amounted to a crime against the public safety. And a crime it would have to remain until it became strong enough itself to form independent political organizations of its own and to defend them by arms—when we have the period of the “wars of religion”; finally new heretical States arose, also modelled on the consccrational ideal, and, like the medieval State, proscrib­ ing any new “heresies” that might arise within them. 1 The ‘ ‘ emancipation of theJews effected by the French Revolution is a fact which civilised peoples, if they want to remain civilised, will have to take for granted. In itself, it was a just thing (respond­ ing to an aspiration that was, in reality, Christian). But the rationalist and optimist bourgeois ideology—unaware of the mystery of Israel as of all supra-indindual realities, and usurping the name, noble in itself, of liberalism—hoped that it would extinguish the Jewish problem, a hope quickly proved vain. It seems that the times on which we are entering are called to another experi­ ment. It would be fundamentally different from the medieval one but would correspond to it analogically, and would temporalise, if I may so put it, and proportion to a secular type of civilisation, a problem which the Middle Ages looked at from a consccrational standpoint.*' As opposed to a “ parody of the medieval solution ", we must envisage “a Christian pluralist regime based on the dignity of human persons and complete equality of civic rights, which would grant a special statute on the one hand to various spiritual families (and therefore to the Jews), and on the other to national minorities not easy to assimilate (and here again we should find the Jew's)/’ (J. Mari tain, Quations de conscience^ pp. 86-90). The State of Israel was proclaimed on the 14th May 1948. See also my book Destinies 5 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE •i r *1 fi! if r‘» Γ. r' . ! sin that has held him, and so at last to will with a good heart what previously he did not will. “One who is in sin” says St. Thomas, “has no longer a healthy taste, and is not to be snatched from sin by the sweetness of the divine good since his heart is infected with an inordinate love of self; but punish­ ments that cross his nature and thwart his will can snatch him back from sin.”1 That applies to the thought of future punishments inflicted by divine justice; but it applies also to those that can be inflicted in this world by a legitimate authority, whether they be intrinsically spiritual or intrinsically corporal. Of course, the use of coercive power, if imprudent, immoderate, or unjust, can have the worst consequences; but when it is prudent, moderate and just it can be salutary’ and useful and that even for the guilty one himself. 4. ; » t, · ί i I » I k I WHOM DOES THE COERCIVE POWER REACH? Everything can be thrown into confusion and all kinds of iniqui ties fathered on the Church, unless we are clear about those to whom the coercive power applies. The Unbaptized: The authentic coercive power of the Church has no authority to force the faith on those outside. The only right the Church has over adepts, whether of paganism, Judaism, or Islam, who, not being baptized, arc no subjects of hers, is to proclaim the Gospel to them peaceably, and uldmately to protect those of them who may be converted. But the Church never desires to impose the faith on them by force. Faith must be free; you cannot implant it in a soul by force. “You can force a man to enter a church, to approach the altar, to receive the Sacrament; but you cannot force him to believe”, said St. Augustine.2 So also St. Thomas: “Among unbelievers there arc some who have never received the faith, such as the heathen and the Jews; and these are by no means to be compelled to the faith in order that they may believe, because belief depends on the will [quia credere voluntatis er/]. But they should be compelled, if possible, by the 1 In VI Sent., dist. 14, q. 1, a. 2, quacst. 1. Here St. Thomas explains the part played by punish­ ment in the genesis of penitence. In I-II, q. 95, a. 1—“ Whether it is useful that laws should be decreed by men? ”—in which he explores the fundamental reason for the legislative and coercive power, St. Thomas rises in advance above the extremist views which divide modem times—the optimist view which considers man as holy by nature and the pessimist view which considers him corrupted in his essence. He writes: “ Man has by nature a certain aptitude to virtue; he attains the perfection of virtue only by a certain discipline.” That discipline comes from without. To the man who is well-disposed “ it is enough that it is proposed by way of paternal admonitions; but since there are obstinate men who are inclined to vice and made open to good words only with difficulty, it has been necessary to use force or fear in order to hold them back on the slope of evil, so that, leaving off ill-doing, they may at least leave others in peace and, being led by habit to do of their own will what they originally did out of fear, may one day become virtuous.” According to St. Thomas, the law display's a coercive aspect to the evil only; and is primarily rcctificatory and directive with reference to the common good, in virtue of which characteristic it w'ould cer­ tainly have existed in the state of innocence, in which, he say's, some would have had to rule others (I» q- 9θ» 4)· What St. Thomas says of civil society should be understood proportionally or analogically of religious society. 1 In Joan. Er., tract. 26, no. 2. 266 CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER faithful so that they may not hinder the faith by their blasphemies or by their evil persuasions, or even by their open persecutions. It is for this reason that Christ’s faithful often wage war with unbelievers, not indeed for the purpose of forcing them to believe—because even if they were to conquer them and take them prisoner, they should still leave them free to believe if they will—but in order to prevent them from hindering the faith of Christ.”1 The Council of Trent in its turn, recalls that “the Church never passes any judgment on those who have not first entered her through the door of baptism”.1 *3* And the code of Canon Law declares generally that purely ecclesiastical laws cannot bind the unbaptized.3 We see what has to be thought from a Catholic standpoint of the forced conversions of the Saxons by Charlemagne, of the Jews and Moors by the Catholic kings. The Baptized : Of these we must distinguish two classes. First, there are those who, having been bom in dissidence, continue there in good faith. St. Augustine refuses to consider them as guilty, and conse­ quently to give them the name, always infamous in his vocabulary, of here­ tics: “Whoever defends his opinion, however erroneous or perverse, without pertinacity, especially when this opinion is not the fruit of his own pre­ sumption but is inherited from parents seduced and carried away into error, if he honestly seeks the truth and is ready to yield to it when found, this man should not be reckoned among the heretics.”1 Such men are incipiently members of the Church. But on account of their good faidi the coercive power of the Church does not touch them any more than it touches the non-baptized. Thinking of them, but without here wishing to separate them from the unbaptized—for he has just been speaking of tolerance of different religions by the State—Leo XIII recalls that: “in fact the Church is wont to take earnest heed that no one shall be forced to embrace the Catholic faith against his will, for, as St. Augustine wisely reminds us, man cannot believe otherwise than of his own free will”.5 What therefore has been said of the unbaptized applies also to these baptized “incipient members” of the Church. There can be no question of forcing them to believe, or to observe the Church’s laws. All that is allowable is to prevent them from corrupting the faith of the humble. • ■ i 1 II-II, q. io, a. 8. 1 Denz. 895. ’ Canon 12. For souls that do not belong to her, writes E. Vacandard, *' the Church has always considered that the compelle intrare refers only to a moral constraint, only to gentle persuasion. That is a distinction of the first importance, and yet a responsible critic has forgotten to make it. * How,’ he says, * could a religion of love and tolerance, based on the Gospel, come to bum alive those who did not accept its teaching? That is the problem.’ But Lea himself look care not to fall into this error. He shows, on the contrary, that the Church has never prosecuted non-Christians and has put no constraint on unbelievers. But he regards this as an inconsequence. To be consistent to the end the Church should have burnt unbelievers as well as heretics ” (L'.Inquisition, elude historique et critique sur le pouvoir coercitif de rÉglùe, Paris 1907, p. 311. The “ responsible critic ” mentioned by Vacandard is Paul Frédéricq, in his historical introduction to the French translation of Lea's History of the Inquisition). ‘ Epul. XLIII, i. 5 Encyclical Immortale Dei, 1 st Nov. 1885. 267 4 -· THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE Λ tr. ;» ■ ii » ; I ,ΐ The second class is that of the baptized who, having been born in the Church, have culpably deserted her. These are they whom the older Doctors —Augustine or Aquinas—call heretics or schismatics. They are at one and the same time still of the Church and already no longer of the Church. In their case we must speak of a “repudiated” or “servile” membership of the Church. It is clear to start with that in the measure in which they are aggressors and corrupt the faith of the humble, the Church has a right to defend herself against them. . -γ But the coercive power could reach them on another count, not now as aggressors but as guilty—supposing this guilt established. The coercive power might therefore intervene for two purposes. The first would be to repress the guilty so as to defend and safeguard the common good.1 The second will be to correct the guilty and induce them to fulfil the promises they have forgotten, to their own prejudice. For we are free to make vows, but having made them ought to keep them ; and we are free to opt for the faith, but having done so ought to remain faithful. Here St. Thomas recalls what St. .Augustine said in his letter to Count Boniface: “What do these people mean by crying out are we not free to believe or not to believe? Whom did Christ compel? They should remember that Christ at first compelled Paul and afterwards taught him.”3 The Church wishes to make them begin in the suffering of segregation what she hopes they will afterwards fulfil in love. 5- THE NATURE OF ECCLESIASTICAL SANCTIONS “Because sin is an inordinate act, it is evident that whoever sins commits an offence against an order: wherefore he is put down by that same order, which repression is punishment. Accordingly, man can be punished with a threefold punishment corresponding to the orders to which the human will is subject. In the first place, a man’s nature is subjected to the order of his own reason; secondly, it is subject to the order of another man who governs him cither in spiritual or in temporal matters, as a member either of the State or of the household : thirdly, it is subjected to the universal order of the divine government . . . Wherefore he incurs a threefold punishment: one, inflicted by himself, viz., remorse of conscience; another, inflicted by men; and a third inflicted by God.’’3 St. Thomas here distinguishes the spiritual social order and the temporal social order. We must therefore ‘Speaking of heretics St. Thomas says: “ If the Church proceeds against them it is not to make them believe by violence, but to save others from being corrupted and not to leave so great a sin unpunished ” (/Γ5η/., dist. 13, q. 2, a. 3, ad 5). ’ II—II, q. 10, a. 8, ad 3: St. Augustine, Epistle CLXXXV, 22. The appropriateness of this scripture reference could be debated. The fact remains that in this sphere coercion is a dangerous custom, and should not be applied unless there is good hope of paving the way for some great good or averting some great evil. ’St. Thomas, l-IL q. 87, a. 1. 268 rr-Γ^.ξ. CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER similarly distinguish spiritual sanctions from temporal sanctions. Between the spiritual order and the temporal order, both of them however visible, between the law that aims at friendship of man with God, and the law that aims at friendship of men with each other,1 there is, properly speaking, no univocity, but a likeness of analogy or proportionality; similarly between offences against the order of the Church and offences against the order of the State, between the sanctions of the Church and the sanctions of the State, there is no univocity, but only a likeness of analogy or proportionality. The spiritual or supernatural order is better than the temporal. To build itself up it has need of faith, charity and the infused virtues, of everything in the world that is freest. It draws far more than does the temporal order on the reserves of generosity in men. It uses earthly realities as the basis in this world for the potencies of grace, as a temple for the divine presence, and in order eventually to raise them to the height of its own law by giving them a share in the splendours of the transfiguration—whereas the temporal order uses these same earthly realities only to erect perishable social structures which end in surrender to the law of matter and are swept away by the revolutions of history. In a word, the spiritual social order, the Church, is a kingdom in this world, but not, like the temporal social order, o/’this world. Because of all these differences, it is fitting that the laws that rule it and the sanctions that protect it, even when they look to material means and intrin­ sically temporal penalties, should refrain from using them in the manner, always more or less harsh, of the State, but only in ways more moderate, pure, and holy. “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world my servants would certainly strive that I should not be delivered to the Jews; but now my kingdom is not from hence” (John xviii. 36). It would be going too far to cite tliis text to establish that the Church should never be defended by the secular arm. But it clearly means that, when it becomes just to defend it by the secular arm, it is never just to do so in the manner of the kingdoms of this world. It would be therefore an error to put the sanctions of the spiritual society and the sanctions of the political society on the same level. Even when they coincide materially—if, for example, the Church should approve penalties intrinsically temporal (such as fines, imprisonment, etc.)—these sanctions would differ profoundly in their justification, in their nature, and in their ends. We may see an indication of this difference, a sign that the Church uses even intrinsically temporal penalties in a spirit different from that of the State, in the fact that while recognizing that under certain conditions the death-penalty can be justified and legitimately decreed by the secular power,2 and that in certain conditions war can be justly waged, she is 1 “ Sicut intentio principalis legis humanae est ut faciat amicitiam hominum adbwican, ita intentio legis divinae est ut constituat principaliter amicitiam hominis ad Drum ” (St. Thomas, I-II, q. 99, a. 2: Utrum Itx vetus conlinral praecepta moralia?), 1 “ We affirm that the secular power can, without mortal sin, execute sentence of death, provided that it does not do so out of hatred but for justice’ sake, not recklessly, but wisely ” (Denz. 425). Ο · I 269 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE * ’ 4 · i : I* I •a 2 nevertheless absolutely forbids all clerics and all who hold ecclesiastical power, to have any hand themselves in the heaviest and most terrible of punishments, die punishment of death. Ecclesia horret a sanguine. The reason for this, explains St. Thomas, is that the shedding of blood, even supposing it entirely just, is profoundly repugnant to those who, commemorating Christ’s sacrifice, have a mission “not to slay or shed blood, but rather to be ready to shed their own blood for Christ, so as to imitate in deed what they portray in their ministry. For this reason it has been decreed that those who shed blood, even without sin, become irregular”.1 We should fall into an opposite error if we denied that the Church’s power of coercion could cover intrinsically temporal penalties. For although the Church is spiritual, she is not invisible or outside this world ; she is visible and in the world. Her spirituality does not consist in eliminating visible realities; it consists in utilizing them, not doubtless as the State does, but otherwise than the State does, with greater purity, greater elevation of mind, and greater holiness than the State. Hence she has often claimed the power in question. In his Encyclical Quanta Cura of 8th December 1864, Pius IX condemned those who asserted that “the Church has no power to constrain law-breakers with temporal penalties”.5 More recently, the Code of Canon Law, as we have seen, has recalled that the Church has, of herself, independently of any human authority whatever, the right to constrain her delinquent subjects “by penalties, whether temporal or spiritual To hold that the Church cannot make use of intrinsically temporal punish­ ments is to forget that she is a visible society; to hold that she can do so in just the same way as the State does is to forget that she is a spiritual society. 1 II—II, q. 40, a. 2, Utrum claicis el episcopis tit licitum pugnare? Is the right of the sword repugnant to the Church merely by a convention of positive law consecrated by immemorial usage, or is it repugnant essentially, in virtue of the very nature of her spiritual power? The point is debated by Catholic theologians. The reason I adduce leads me to chocee this second opinion, cf. L. Choupin, Valeur des decisions doctrinales et disciplinaires du saint siègr, pp. 511 et seq. The présent Code of Canon Law considers the judge who has given sentence of death, and the executioner and his immediate assistants, as irregular ex defectu (can. 984, §§6 and 7). ’ Denz. 1697. The 24th condemned proposition of the S',link us·. “ The Church has not the right to use force ” (Denz. 1724) undoubtedly refers to the coercive power; but it does not say whether intrinsically temporal or simply moral penalties are envisaged. But it would be easy to draw up a list of temporal penalties decreed at various times by Popes and Councils. The Council of Trent provided for example that the ecclesiastical judges could inffict fines (Session XXV, De Reformatione, cap. iii). cf. The Codex Juris Canonici, can. 2291. 1 Can. 2214. §t. “The opinion that denies the Church any power to constrain by temporal punishments is at least erroneous, and rash·, it is not fully evident that it is heretical, for the expression ' temporal punishments ’ docs not figure in so many words in die definitions of the Church. How­ ever, Suarez considers the opposite doctrine as of faith ” (J. V. de Groot, O.P., Summa Apologetico de Ecclesia Catholica, Ratisbon 1906. p. 394). As for Suarez, here are his exact positions: He regards as offaith the thesis affirming that “ The Church has the power to constrain heretics by punishments not only spiritual, but temporal and corporal ” ; as heretical, the thesis reserving to temporal princes alone the power of spiritually and temporally constraining heretics; as erroneous, and bringing its defenders under strong suspicion of heresy, the thesis reserving to the Church only spiritual coercion aud to temporal princes all temporal and corporal coercion (De Fide, disp. 20, sect. 3, nos. 13-21), 270 I Λ’? CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER If “the Church” be taken to mean simply the sum-total of churchmen, or even the sum-total of Christians, she could undoubtedly be blamed for many sins and iniquities which it is the duty of every Christian to condemn and not to justify. The name “Church” is then taken so materially that all the sins of Christians become part of her make-up. It is not thus, but always formally, that we understand the Church in this enquiry. The churchman, like the simplest of the faithful, belongs to hcr by reason of what is holy in him, not by reason of his sins. We shall say, from this standpoint, that the visible Church may indeed contain sinners, but not sins. “He that com­ mitted! sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God appeared, that he might destroy the works of the devil. Whosoever is born of God committed! not sin: for his seed abideth in him, and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil” (1 John iii. 8-10). The Church therefore is not to be held responsible for every mode of exercising the coercive power, but for that only which is virtuous, not promp­ ted by passion but ruled by justice, with severity when right reason demands it, and with clemency when it pernuts. Once more therefore we can never seek to lay on the Church the innumer­ able sins of those of her children who openly disobey her, or who, feigning exterior obedience, betray her spirit. In her Code of Canon Law the Church recalls the spirit in which the coercive power should be used. Having declared that “she has a true and native right, independent of all human authority, to apply constraint to her culpable subjects, inflicting on them punishments, spiritual or even tem­ poral”, she draws attention at once to the warning of the Council of Trent: “Let the bishops and other ordinaries remember that they are pastors, not persecutors, that they should rule their subjects, not lord it over them, but love them as sons and brothers, and try to turn them from evil ways by advice and exhortations, for fear of having to be severe when they sin. But when human frailty has led them to fall into sin, let the bishops, conformably with the word of the Apostle, reprove, entreat, rebuke in all patience and doctrine, since sinners arc often more easily brought back to the right way by benignity than by sternness, by persuasion than by threats, by charity than by authority. But if, on account of the gravity of the sin, chastisement becomes inevitable, then let sternness be tempered with gentleness, justice with mercy, severity with sweetness, that necessary and wholesome discipline may be preserved without undue harshness, that those corrected may amend, or at least, if they will not come to a better mind, that others may be deterred by the salutary example of their punishment.”1 1 Codex Juris Canonici, can. 2214. This text mentions the three ends of punishment: (1) the repressive end, to safeguard the common good ; (2) the medicinal end, for the amendment of the sinner ; 271 · FOR WHAT EXERCISE OF THE COERCIVE POWER IS THE CHURCH, UNDERSTOOD FORMALLY AND THEOLOGICALLY, RESPONSIBLE? • 6. THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE I e From this wc may sec that it is only the virtuous use of the coercive power that the Church takes upon herself. Even when virtuous, this use will not be infallible in every given case. For judicial sentences belong to the domain of particular decisions where error is always possible. The divine assistance is here assured, not for each individual case in its individuality, but only in general and for the due functioning of the whole. Wc can imagine, as an extreme case, a sentence of excommunication prudently and virtuously pronounced, but falling by sheer mistake on an innocent person. The moralists say that at bottom such an excommunication would be invalid, since where there is no offence, that is to say no morally imputable violation of a law,1 no ecclesiastical sentence properly so-called can be pronounced ; and that no one would be bound to obey it, for example by refraining from the sacraments, save only for the scandal that might otherwise be caused. Wc can even imagine a case, unlikely perhaps, but possible—not that ofJoan of Arc, who was condemned by men whose hearts were far from clean—of a judicial sentence, motivated by the purest love of justice, which by some unavoidable misapprehension, shall have declared heretical and delivered to the secular arm one whose error was in fact not culpable, whose death was magnanimous, whose charity was heroic, and whose sanctity would be later on proclaimed ; so that from both sides, that of the judge and that of the accused, there would be equal love of God and desire for justice. Such misunderstandings are always possible here below. Love might even be increased by them : aquae muilae non potuerunt extinguere charttatcm. B. Mixed Questions: The Exercise History, and the of the Coercive Power in Inquisition I. RECOURSE HAD TO THE SECULAR ARM PARTICULARLY FOR PENALTIES LESSER THAN THAT OF DEATH a. The Church's Rights The means of temporal coercion at the disposal of the Church—fines, deprivation of benefices, segregation, internment in a monastery, imprison­ ment—are limited, and their use commonly difficult and sharply restricted. It is the State that has the most effective means to hand: exile, confiscation of goods, perpetual imprisonment and so forth. When the Church washes to deal with her rebellious subjects, can she approach the State and not merely beg, but require it to punish them? Yes: but only in certain circumstances. The Church certainly believes that she possesses this right. The four­ teenth proposition of John Hus, condemned at the Council of Constance, and (3) the prtrenlice end, to put fear into the wicked, cf. Konstantin Hoh.enJohe Einfuss des Ckrutenlums auf das Corpus Juris Cicilis, Vienna 1937, p. 206. 1 ibid., can. 2195. §1. 272 CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER asserts that to deliver to the secular arm those who despise ecclesiastical censures, is to imitate the Priests, Scribes and Pharisees who gave up Christ to Pilate under the plea that they were not allowed to put anyone to death (John xviii. 31).1 The thirty-second question proposed by the Council of Constance to the followers of Wicliff and Hus asked whether they admitted that “when the disobedience and insolence of the excommunicated increased, their prelates and spiritual rulers could make the excommunication heavier, impose an interdict and call on the secular arm [brachium saeculare invo­ candi] The Council of Trent provided that women living publicly in sin could be driven out of a town or diocese, “by recourse, if necessary, to the secular arm”.3 The Code of Canon Law stipulates that “offences against the law of the Church alone, are, of their nature, within the cognisance of the ecclesiastical authority alone, which, when it judges it necessary or opportune, can claim the help of the secular arm”? Finally, the Roman Bullarium testifies to numerous cases of resort to the secular arm? What circumstances arc needed to justify such a recourse? From the standpoint of the Church as calling for them, it suffices that the steps in question arc really apt and effectual to achieve the desired spiritual good. But that is not all. From the standpoint of the State, on whom the Church calls, other conditions are required. I shall attempt to define them. Since the proper end of the temporal power is the temporal common good, the only acts that can be asked of it will be those which in the long run will contribute to the maintenance and advancement of the temporal common good. “Reignative” prudence,6 the characteristic virtue of the political ruler, will not allow him to engage in other enterprises than those directed to the political well-being of his country; this of course being understood in the highest and most generous sense, not in an egoistic and basely utilitarian way. “A certain measure of temporal success is postulated as a matter of course ” by temporal efforts and means. ‘“Whoso loses his soul for my sake,’ Our Lord says, ‘shall find it again. ’ He did not say: ‘Whoso loses his king­ dom shall save it. ’ St. Louis was an excellent administrator of his kingdom; he added to its power and prosperity.”7 Even when a country sacrifices 1 Dcnz., 640. 1 Denz.. 682. 3 Session XXIV, De Reformatione Matrimonii, cap. vni. 4 Can. 2198. 5 The secular arm was used for fighting heresy and schism in the fourth century. Heresy’ was re­ pressed under the Imperial laws. “ This state of things did not last long, at any rate not in the West. The fifth century had not passed away bcfoie the Roman Empire lay in ruins. The bar­ barians who divided amongst themselves the heritage of imperial Rome did not adopt, save on rare occasions, the religious legislation of the successors of Constantine . . . The repression of heresy was no more than a theological thesis to which popular indignation gave from lime to time a sad reality. From the end of the twelfth century' this thesis penetrated into the domain of law; it took its place among the canons of the Holy Roman Church, which the Christian princes were bound in conscience to obey” (J. Tunnel, “ Chronique d'histoire ecclésiastique”, Rerue du clergé français, Jan. 1906, vol. XLIX, p. 389). 4 St. Thomas, II—II, q. 50, a. 1. 7 J. Mari tain, Religion and Culture, London 1931, p. 49. 273 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE tself to defend its fellows in Christendom, it is still a political good—for heroism, fraternal friendship, fidelity are political goods—the memory of which will be cherished among men. And even when a power intervenes to punish “an offence that breaks no law but the Church’s”, this would be in view of a higher political advantage, and because it is known that the Church alone can speed the advent of a true humanism and a full political life. (Thus for example in another domain, the State could contribute to the budget of a purely spiritual cult, because of its beneficial effect on the tem­ poral.) Could the Church, would the Church, ever ask of the head of a state, even for the best of causes, an intervention that would dismember this state, give it over to civil war, for example, and political ruin? No. She could strengthen and exalt the aims of reignative prudence, but not bring them simply to nothing. It follows that she cannot legitimately call for the support of the secular arm save when some immediately temporal good—a very exalted one perhaps, such as the temporal good of all Christendom—is to be expected. She would drop any claim on it at once if it involved any grave political injury, not because the State’s refusal would make any recourse to the secular arm physically impossible, but because she would her­ self regard this recourse as surrounded by quite different moral conditions and as constituting a morally reprehensible act. b. The Secular Arm Able to Act Under the Church Either as Principal Cause or as Instrument How are we to explain the mutual relations of Church and State in the case of a recourse to the secular arm? Two schemas1 can be proposed, as I have said. In the first the State acts as instrument of the Church. It is the Church that takes the initiative and the responsibility. She makes use of the State for ends which, being spiritual or supernatural, are higher than those of the State. And yet in this, the State, at any rate in the highest sense, will find its own political advantage. In the performance of an act intrinsically political—it is always by way of its own proper act that an instrument performs its instrumental act2—it procures spiritual ends which hic et nunc will bring with them good temporal consequences. ! Under the second schema the State acts as principal cause. It takes all the initiative and responsibility for an intervention whose end is an immediately temporal good considered as conditioning a spiritual good, or even, in the case of a consec rational regime, as involving a spiritual good. Clearly enough the intervention of the secular arm will have a different character according as it falls under one or the other of these schemas. In the first case it should tend to fall in with the mode of action of the spiritual power. In the second it will follow no law but its own, which is that of the temporal. 1 Cf. above, p. 250. *St. Ihomas, Ill, q. 62, a. I, ad 2. 274 .■-â'uüùï CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER I believe that the calls the Church has actually made on the secular arm are to be explained in terms of one or other of these two schemas. It is for the historian to say which in each ease, and it will not always be an easy task. It becomes the less so by the fact that in the Middle Ages the Pope did not always act in virtue of his canonical power and as Vicar of Christ, but sometimes in virtue of his extra-canonical powers, as Prince of the Roman State or as Protector of Christendom. Let us say, still speaking very generally, that the State always seeks a political advantage. If it seeks it secondarily, as an accompaniment or consequence of a precise and previously willed spiritual good, then the State is behaving as an instrument of the Church. If it seeks it primarily—even though this political good remains subordinate to the spiritual good attached to it—then the State is acting as principal cause. For it is open to the State, without any sin, to seek spiritual things— to establish divine worship for example, as Cajetan remarks—on account of the political advantages they carry with them.1 b. w c. St. Augustine’s Two Attitudes on the Coercion of Heretics The Church has the right to call on the secular arm. She can, and at times she ought to, exercise this right in defence of good morals. Is there ever anything to be gained by exercising it in defence of the faith? Has resort to the political power for such a purpose ever been opportune—has it ever been really useful to the Church herself? a. No one knew the value of liberty better than St. Augustine. No one was less inclined to introduce force into the domain of intelligence and love. At the outset of his book Contra Epistolam Manichaei Quam Vocant Fundamenti, which dates from 397, he writes: “Let those rage against you who know not how hard a task it is to reach the truth, how difficult to avoid error. Let them rage against you who know not how seldom and how hardly our corporeal fancies are pierced by the intelligence of a pious spirit. Let them rage against you who know not how difficult it is to clear the eye of the interior man that it may behold the true Sun . . . Let them rage against you who know not how many sighs and groanings go to how imperfect a knowledge of God. Let them, lastly, rage against you who have never fallen into error like yours. For my part I, who did not come to contemplation of the pure truth cleared of fables save after long tossing about in seas of bewilderment ; who in my misery could barely with God’s help shake off the vain fantasies of my mind mixed with a throng of false opinions; who yielded so late to the 1 “ If human law should propose to subordinate divine worship to the interests of the peace of society, and if, for example, it saw in that the chief reason for honouring God, it would be perverse. Human law dors not do that: although doubtless many impious legislators have attempted it, inventing all kinds of myths to serve this end, as /Xristotle suggests in the second book of die ΛΡΛ>~ physics. But whereas there arc many ways of justifying divine worship, human law, taking account only of those things that concern its own domain, will make them serve the common good, and it abstracts from reasons diat do not concern it. Now to abstract is neither to lie nor to sin. And if grace perfects nature instead of destroying it, human law can take the common good of human society for its principal end without thereby being prevented from subordinating it to a higher end in virtue of a higher principle ” {In I-II, q. 99, a. 3, no. 4). 275 * ».· · THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE ? > Î 4 I ‘ r ! ♦ . · ;f* i I 3^ vj2 >1 physician who called me and drew me so sweetly to rid me of this darkness of my mind; who cried out so long that the immutable and immaculate Substance of whom Holy Scripture speaks, might deign to make Himself known to me; who sought out curiously all those fictions that now hold you in the bonds of old acquaintance and custom, listened to them attentively, believed them imprudently, urged them at every opportunity upon the belief of others, defended them obstinately and passionately—I certainly have no wish to rage against you, for I ought to bear with you as then I was borne with, and to show as much patience with you as then my neighbour had with me, when, infatuate and blind, I too erred in your doctrine.” That is St. Augustine’s first attitude. And undoubtedly it is the attitude to which we shall have finally to return, given that the medieval era is gone. In that era the West made a supreme effort to banish from her political and cultural life those who held any form of religious error, driving back the Jews into their ghettos, the new heretics into the darkness of excommuni­ cation and death,1 and the pagans into the four continents. But we are now entering on an era in which the disciples of truth and of error arc to be inextricably mingled together, like the wheat and the tares, till the end of time, not indeed in the religious life, but in the political and cultural life of every country on earth. I do not doubt that it was to prepare our hearts for a new effort, differing from the medieval effort, that Pope Pius XI cited at the close of his Encyclical for the fifteenth centenary' of the death of St. Augustine,2 the great Doctor’s moving declaration to the Manichaeans. b. And yet, on the testimony of Augustine himself, the secular arm has been employed to good effect in defence of the faith. He himself had seen it happen. In the letter he addressed about the year 408 to Vincentius the Donatist bishop, having recalled how the Donatists themselves had tried to call in the secular arm, he adds: “You see now I hope that the thing to be considered is not just whether anybody is constrained, but by what or in what cause it is that he is constrained, whether for good or for evil. Not that a man can become good in spite of himself; but fear of what he does not wish to suffer either makes him moderate the obstinacy by which he is held, or induces him to inform himself about the truth of which he is ignorant: it will cither make him quit the error he cherishes, or seek the truth he docs not 1 Followers of the older heresies, for instance the Nestorians of the East, were treated otherwise. The Graeco-Russians were never at bottom regarded as truly and finally separated. The only heretics to be persecuted were those who, in the very bosom of the West, set out to defeat the effort of the West, which was at once cultural and religious. For it was thought that the precept to tolerate the cockle was binding only if it was clear that die cockle could not be tom up widiout the wheat. When the danger of tearing up both together was overcome, that is to say “ when a man’s crime is $0 publicly known and so hateful to all that he has no defenders, or none such as might create a schism, then the severity of discipline should not be relaxed ”. These words of St. Augustine’s, with excommunication in view (Ccn/ra Epùt. Parmtniani, lib. HI, cap. II), arc recalled by St. Thomas in connection with the repression of heretics in II-II, q. to, a. 8, ad t ; q. 11, a. 3, ad 3. He notes that the guilty cannot be eliminated without danger: (1) when their malice is not certain, (2) when they do not remain obstinate in error, (3) when they are inextricably intermingled with the good (Quodlibet X, q. 7, a. 15, ad t). |SH 1 Ad SaluUm Humani Cauris9 20 April 1930. 276 CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER know; and he conies in the end to will with a good heart what before he did not will.1 It would be useless perhaps to say such things if numerous examples were not there to attest them. Wc have seen not merely certain men here and there, but whole towns, once Donatist, now Catholic, detesting their late diabolical schism and animated with an ardent love for unity; and they became Catholic on occasion of this very fear that so displeases you, and of the laws of the emperors ... I have therefore yielded to these examples laid before me by my colleagues. For my first feeling was against constraining anybody [to return] to the unity of Christ, to act only by words, to fight by discussion, to. conquer by reason, for fear of changing into pretended Catholics those whom wc knew before as open heretics.2 It was not con­ tentious words that overcame my opinion but indisputable facts. They pointed, to start with, to my own town, which having been wholly of the party of Donatus was converted to the unity of the Catholic faith by fear of the imperial laws; and we see it so strongly detesting its former views that one would think it had never fallen into them. So it has been with many other towns whose names were mentioned to me that I might see in them 1 There is no question, be it repeated, of constraining to the faith those who have never had it— there is nothing cither Augustian or traditional about such a thesis—but only of bringing pressure to bear on those who have culpably deserted it. Concerning the case of St. Francis Xavier, Léon van der Essen writes: “He still retained traces of the medieval conception of missionary* work among the pagans, which envisaged the rapid conversion of the masses with the help and support of the chief or prince. Francis Xavier sometimes had recourse to the temporal power in order to grapple with drunkenness or in order to destroy the exterior manifestations of paganism. In one set of circumstances at least he even declared that the conversion of pagans is impossible without the support of force; and in that, he is the child of a tradition. But for all that he only called upon the temporal power in certain strictly determined cases, and he is the first among the missionaries whose overriding desire is to act above all by means of the inner power of the Gospel and through his own personality, without always, or even often, seeking an easy* support from outside—which is something new and should be particularly emphasised ” (Histoire générale comparée des missions: Les missions ό Γépoque des découvertes, Brussels 1932, p. 321). In my opinion this is at one and the same time to do too much and too little honour to St. Francis Xavier. It is to do too much, because he is—happily—not the first missionary*, even in the East, to rely solely on the inner power of the Gospel: in 1305 John of Montecorvino, in the heart of China, asked to be sent friars “ who have one desire only—to give themselves as an example It is to do too little, because when he wishes the King of Portugal himself to threaten the Governor of Ceylon with chains if he does not “ make many Christians ”, he docs not mean that the pagans should be forced to believe. On the contrary, what he wants to do is to put an end to the rivalries among the missionaries, “ the injustices and robberies of which the poor Christians are the victims Père Brou writes: “The protectorate, such as we see it exercised today in the Far East, may have its inconveniences; but Francis had no experience of them. He judges on the basis of what he has before his own eyes; since Portugal is Catholic, she should be so in her colonies, and be so all through, right up to the furthest practical consequences. These consequences arc three in number: the stopping of persecution and consequent ensuring of freedom of conscience: the encouragement of conversions through increasing the number of missionaries: and the ending of the scandal caused by the injustices perpetrated by the Europeans against Christians. That is all that is implied by the phrase 4 to make Christians ’ which he several times employs. We may add the temporal advantages granted by Europeans to their new brethren in the faith, and then we have St. Francis Xavier’s compelle intrare in its entirety, in which we cannot discern the anti-Gospcl elements which Protestantism may see. For this is indeed the minimum that may be asked of a Christian prince who has a sense of his responsibilities ” (Saint François Xavier, Paris 1912, vol. II, p. 10). 2 Remember ‘hat this word, in St. Augustine, al way’s implies bad faith: he docs not class with the heretics those who, bom in error, however pernicious, defend it in good faith. 277 ?1 ’ i THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE new verifications of the Scripture text: Give an occasion to a wise man, and wisdom shall be added to him [Prov. ix. 9]. For how many there are—yve have certain proof of it—that, struck by the evidence of the truth would have long ago become Catholic, and put it off from day to day for fear of the violence of their own party! How many remain enslaved—not to the truth, for there never was any presumption that the truth was on your side—but to the heavy chains of inveterate custom, so that in them the divine word is fulfilled : A slave will not be corrected by words: because he understandeth what thou sayest and will not answer [Prov. xxix. 19]. How many believed that the party of Donatus was the true Church, merely because the peace in which they lived had made them sleepy, tired, idle in seeking out the truth! For how many were not the doors of the Church closed by lying rumours that we placed I know not what offerings on the altar of God ! How many, thinking that the place where a Christian was could matter but little, remained in the sect of Donatus because they had been born there,1 and because nobody had compelled them to leave it and pass to the Catholic Church. The fear of these laws by whose promulgation kings serve the Lord in fear, has been thus profitable to all.”2 In the letter to Boniface mentioned above, written about 417, in which he summarises the same argument, St. Augustine adds: “Give me a man who, with right faith and true understanding, can say with all the energies of his heart: My soul thirstethfor God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God? For such a one there is no need of the terror of hell, to say nothing of temporal punishments or imperial laws, seeing that for him it is so great a good to cleave to God that he not only dreads being parted from that happiness but can scarcely even bear delay in its attainment. But yet before the good sons can cry out that they have a desire to depart and to be with Christ, many, like bad servants and good-for-nothing fugitives, must first be recalled to their Lord by the goad of temporal pains. For who can love us more than Christ who has laid down His life for His sheep? And yet, after calling Peter and the other Apostles by word alone, when He came to summon Paul, who was before called Saul, who would become the great builder of His Church but was before her cruel persecutor, He not only stopped him with a word but dashed him to earth by His power; and to bring him to desire the light of faith who walked in the darkness of infidelity He struck him first with blindness of the eyes. Without that punishment he would not afterwards have been healed; and unless he had had afflicted eyes when, opening them, he saw nothing [Acts ix. 8], the Scripture would not tell us that there fell as it were scales from these eyes at the touch of Ananias’ hands. What then becomes of the Donatist protestation: Is not man at liberty Io believe or not to believe? To whom did Christ do violence? Whom did He constrain? Here before them stands the Apostle Paul. Here let them recognize Christ first compelling and afterwards teaching, first striking and 1 That is, remained there bv culpable negligence,________________ XGI1I, 16-18. 278 < V··. £ CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER afterwards consoling. For wonderful indeed it is that he who entered the service of the Gospel through corporal constraint, afterwards laboured more in the Gospel than all they who were called by word of mouth ; and he who was compelled by fear to love displayed that perfect love that casts out fear.”1 Later on, in the Retractations (towards 426) the same doctrine appears. St. Augustine there speaks of two books of his, now lost, written Contra Partem Donati·. ‘‘In the first of these books I wrote that I was displeased at those who wished to call in the secular arm to force the schismatics to return to communion. And at that time, it is true that I did not approve it at all. 1 had then no experience either of the audacity in evil which brought them impunity, or of the beneficent change which the observance of discipline could produce.”12 Elsewhere Augustine shows himself aware that these interventions of the secular arm “are subject to abuses, and detestable abuses, which the good condemn and oppose to the best of their power [no doubt he had had occasion himself to react against them with all the authority at his command] but if it happens that the good cannot prevent what they condemn, it will be their duty to put up with it for the sake of peace, pro pace laudabiliter tolerant, non ea laudabilia, sed damnabilia judicantes . . . He thinks of the coercion of heretics by the secular arm; he foresees the excesses it may occasion; he asks us to resign ourselves to these pro pace, for the peace of the Church, because nothing can justify schism, and because the good should not abandon unity whatever the trials they may have to face.”3 d. Conclusion What is to be the theologian’s final reply to the problem raised by recourse to the secular arm? If recourse to the secular arm were, in itself, that is to say always and everywhere, contrary to the true spirit of the Gospel, we should evidently be unable to regard it as open to the Church. It w'ould be unjustifiable. At the most we might be able to plead extenuating circumstances. And, since we believe that the Church herself is holy and immaculate, we should have to throw the responsibility' for the numerous occasions on which secular help has been sought and obtained, not on her, but on the spirit of violence characterizing certain historical epochs; on the short-sightedness, weakness, error, passion—in a word, on the personal failings of Pontiffs who so insuffi­ ciently or even unworthily represented her. For if the Church is without sin she is not without sinners, and even her Pontiffs may be sinners. Is such a position really called for, or even tenable? I think not. Undoubtedly there is much that an historian of the Church can put down to the false spirit of the times, to the personal or social short­ comings of ministers of the Church; and many regrettable episodes may be 1 Epist., CLXXXV, 21-22. 2 Lib. II, cap. v. ’ Pierre Batiffol, Le catholicisme de saint Augustin, Paris 1920, p. 290. Cf. Contra Cresconium, lib. III55. 279 *' il THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE thus explained. But I do not think that resort to the secular arm is always and everywhere incompatible with an enlightened zeal for the Gospel and for the salvation of souls. And so there is nothing to prevent us from some­ times making the Church herself responsible; her purity and sanctity will remain untouched. Moreover it is clear that the Church assumes this responsibility'. We could deny' the fact only by' claiming that a penal law of quite general application, sanctioned by several Popes, long embodied in the Corpus and invoked by the Council of Trent, was the work of the spirit of the world, of ignorance, of human imprudence and passion. And this no theologian would concede. But it will be important to make quite sure under which of the two schemas above mentioned recourse to the secular arm is had ; for the responsi­ bility of the Church is involved in a completely different way according as she herself makes use of the State as an instrument, or asks, or even requires, the State to act as principal cause, on its own initiative and in its own con­ natural manner. Moreover, one fact is evident. In proportion as the temporal power be­ comes more and more differentiated from the spiritual, in proportion as we pass from a regime of the consecrational type, in which the temporal order is exceptionally well adapted to serve as instrument of the spiritual, to a regime of the secular type bringing together citizens of all confessions and beliefs, any appeal to the secular arm, especially if it be asked to function as a pure instrument of the spiritual, becomes much less frequent, more delicate, more hypothetical. But the essential power, the radical right of the Church, is not therefore modified. It is undeniable. And one can imagine that in a secular Christendom of a pluralist type the Church might still exercise it under new forms, and in connection with her own children alone. 2. THE DEATH PENALTY AND THE MEDIEVAL REPRESSION OF HERESY a. The State of the Question Can the Church in certain circumstances—for if we want to state her doctrine, not travesty it, we must be precise, not generalize in the abstract— can the Church, finding the death penalty universally accepted as just in a given cultural epoch, ask the secular arm to employ it for the repression of heresy, when this, besides its proper spiritual malice, is universally held to be a grave danger for the social order—not only because it is very often accompanied (as among the Cathari) with immoral doctrines and practices,1 nor yet, be it added, simply because it is a heresy’; but rather because it is a heresy which affects Christians living in a Christian society and social order, excluding all non-Christians? Several Popes have done this. They called upon a temporal social order 1 “Taking eventhing into account, says a serious historian (Dollinger), if wc read the acts of the tribunals of the Inquisition of Toulouse and Carcassonne, we are left in no doubt that the rntfard, voluntary or forced, claimed more victims than the stake of the Inquisition ’’ (E. Vacandard, p. 120). 280 CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER composed solely of Christians to use the sternest sanction in its power, the death penalty, in order to save itself from forces bent on its destruction, forces that attacked it at once in itself and in the spiritual principle behind it, that is to say the faith of the Gospel. Did they, in so doing, betray the Gospel? If the answer is yes, on what position would the theologian fall back? He would say, as we said just now, that the Church being holy and unspotted, the responsibility for the betrayal could not lie on her, but would have to fall wholly on her ministers. This position would now be still more readily defensible. The penal legislation of the Church, meaning thereby not all the legislative measures of the Popes, but only those that found their way into the old Corpus, would be beyond reproach ; for if, in the Corpus, there are texts that require the heretic to be turned over to the secular arm, there are none that stipulate that he is then to be put to death.1 But ought then the theologian to disavow, if not the penal code, the general and constant legislation of the Church, at least the decrees, bulls, the more detailed measures, what might be called the jurisprudence* of Pontiffs who, like Gregory IX or Innocent IV, in circumstances which I have done my best to detail, have called for the use of the death penalty against heresy, not precisely as heresy, but as the mcdievo-Westcrn heresy, that is to say, heresy directly incompatible with a political constitution designed for none but the faithful? (It is always to be understood that the faith can inspire other political constitutions, in which Catholics would co-exist politically, not religiously, with non-Catholics, and in which consequently the secular arm would no longer be needed by the Church in dealing with heresy.) Here again I do not think we arc reduced to such an extremity. b. Legitimacy of the Death Penalty in Certain Cases To legitimize a call for the death penalty by the Church we shall need first to be assured that, in certain circumstances, the State can properly employ it on its own account. Let us briefly recall that when the Old Testament forbids killing (Exod. xx. 13) the word “unjustly” is understood. For it goes on to prescribe the death penalty again and again, for example in Leviticus (xx. 2, 9, 10, 27; 1 “ Excommunicamus et anathematizamus universos haereticos . . . Facies quidem habentes diversas, sed caudas ad invicem colligatas, quia de vanitate conveniunt in idipsum. Damnati vero per Ecclesiam saeculari judicio relinquantur, animdversione debita puniendi: clericis prius a suisordinibus degradati ” (Décrétai^ cap. xv., “ De Haereticis lib. V, tit. vit)· Facts alone inform us that in this text of Gregory' IX the animadversio signifies the death penalty, as in the ancient Roman law. But earlier it did not carry this sense: cf. E. Vacandard, L'InqidMon, pp. 132, 67, note 2. In fact the sentence of Gregory' IX is borrowed almost word-for-word from Innocent III (cap. xiii, Dt Haereticis, lib. V, tit. vii). Now, “from the whole penal legislation decreed by Innocent III it results that he never prescribed the death penalty; almost all the critics agree on this point.” The animad­ versio under Innocent III included banishment of the guilty, with its consequences, notably con­ fiscation of goods: at the worst, imprisonment for life (E. Vacandard, op. cit., pp. 69, note 2; 73Î 75» nolc Π ΡΡ· ΐ24“θ)· 1 Here we enter the field of particular decisions, in which the Sovereign Pontiff is assisted only in a prudential and fallible manner. 281 ‘K THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE I': ’ r, i r <■ y -r xxiv. 16, 17). The New Testament did not abolish the right of the sword. St. Paul, speaking of the political authority, writes: “For he is God’s minister to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, fear; for he bcareth not the sword in vain. For he is God’s minister and avenger to execute wrath upon him that doth evil” (Rom. xiii. 4). In his De Civitate Dei, St. Augustine thus comments on these passages: ‘'The same divine authority that says Thou shall not kill, sets up certain exceptions to this prohibition. God then commands, either by way of a general law or a special and temporary com­ mission to an individual, that the punishment of death be applied. Now he is no murderer who acts under authority, but a mere instrument like the sword with which he strikes. And those who by God’s commands have waged war, or who, wielding the public power, and in conformity with the divine laws, have put criminals to death, these have by no means violated the commandment Thou shalt not kill.”1 Consequently, Innocent III did no more than defend a biblical and traditional truth when he proposed to the Vaudois who wished to re-enter the Church, a profession of faith asserting, infer alia, that “the secular power can, without mortal sin, exercise judgment of blood, provided that it punishes with justice, not out of hatred, with prudence, not precipitation.”2 Drawing his inspiration from St. Augustine, St. Thomas, in a few words, resolves the scriptural difficulties brought against this doctrine. To the difficulty drawn from St. Matthew: “He who takes the sword shall perish by the sword” (xxvi. 52), he replies that he who takes the sword is he who sheds blood without having either legitimate power or delegation from the same. But he who uses the sword by direct command of God or of the legitimate authority, does not take the sword, he receives it for the vindication of justice.3 More generally, Christ reminds us that the arms proper to the Kingdom of God are those that are intrinsically spiritual and moral. Not that those intrinsically temporal or physical arms which it turns to account in a certain measure (making what was alien its own), but which are specially the prerogative of the kingdoms of this world, “are in themselves evil and to be rejected. When He says that he who draws the sword shall perish by the sword Christ does not condemn the sword; He announces a universal law of temporal and transitive action”,4 a law which moreover 1 Lib. I, cap. xxi. 5 Denz., 425. ’ Π-Π, q· 40, a. I, ad i; cf. St. Augustine, Contra Faustian, lib. XXII, cap. Ixx. 4 Rausa Maritain, Le printt de ce monde, Paris 1932, p. 17. The terrible fatality which attaches to the use of force, even when legitimate, will not only persuade the churchman to use it only with the greatest prudence, but will also oblige the statesman himself to prefer constructive means to warlike. \Vhen he cannot, and has no alternative but to resort to warlike means, he should surely be led to join the arms of a spiritual warfare to those of a carnal warfare. 4‘ The force of coercion and oi aggression, the force that strikes, aims at the destruction of one evil by way of another evil i in the physical order) which it inflicts on the body. It follows that evil (on however small a scale), passes from one to another endlessly according to the law’ of transitive action. For the patient, unless he has understood and voluntarily accepted the hurt he has received—which happens rarely and anyhow depends on strength of soul—is stirred to react in more or less crafty ways of evil-doing. The force of voluntary suffering and of patience, the force of endurance, tends to annihilate the 282 CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER had long ago been promulgated in Genesis: “Whoso shall shed the blood of man, his blood shall be shed” (ix. 6), and was to be repeated in the Apocalypse (xiii. io): “He that shall kill by the sword must be killed by the sword.” To the difficulties drawn from the Sermon on the Mount: “But I say to you not to resist evil” (Matt. v. 39), and from the textofSt. Paul: “Revenge not yourselves my dearly beloved, but give place unto wrath, for it is written: Revenge is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord” (Rom. xii. 19), St. Thomas replies that such precepts should always be borne in mind so that we may be ready to obey them, and, if necessary, to refrain from resistance or selfdefence. Nevertheless a man must sometimes act otherwise for the common good, or even for the good of those against whom he is fighting.*1 In short, if these words of Scripture were aimed at the abolition of the death penalty and of the coercive power, St. Paul would not have written that the public authorities do not bear the sword in vain, “being God’s ministers and avengers to execute wrath upon him that doth evil” (Rom. xiii. 4). The secular arm therefore can, on its own account and for its own pur­ poses, rightly inflict, on occasion, the punishment of death. c. Whether the Church Could Demand it of the Medieval State Against Heresy Yes, if the heresy directly endangered the fundamental political consti­ tution of society, and if the punishment of death was already provided for the worst crimes against the temporal good of society. But in other cases, no. Let us examine these two conditions. Consider the hypothesis of a civil society, a cultural world, whose aim it was to bind together politically a religiously disparate multitude, and in which the ruler, even were he Catholic, would represent only the political union of that multitude. None can doubt that such a union has become legitimate and necessary to-day. Since the days of the medieval Church, a field in which wheat alone was sown, but enclosed in the narrow limits of the West, Providence has prepared a new era in which tares are to be mixed with the wheat but the field is to cover all the earth.2 On this hypothesis, W!! « Μ 5? •J I? I evil by accepting and dissolving it in Jove, sublimating its sorrow in the soul in the shape of resigna­ tion. There it stays and goes no further. And thus the force that strikes, and is necessary, and, if it be just, stops the expansion of evil and limits and contracts but is unable to extinguish it, lias in its own nature less strength and perfection than the force that endures and that, in the case where it is informed by charity, is of its own strength capable of extinguishing as it arises that evil that free agents never cease to introduce into the world. It is evidently of its own nature a more effec­ tive instrument of redemption." It is of moment therefore for politics to know whether spiritual means, the means of patience, " may not constitute a special type of social and political arm whether a systematic organisation of patience and voluntary suffering might not be a special method of political activity ” (J. Maritain, Freedom in the Modem World, trans. R. O’Sullivan, K.C., London 1935, pp. 175 and 177). 1 II-II, q. 40, a. 1, ad 2; cf. St. Augustine, De Sermone Domini in Monte, lib. I, 58. * Leo XIII declared that if it is not allowable for a Catholic to recognize the equality of all cults, we must nevertheless not condemn the heads of Catholic states who, in view of a great good to be attained or a great evil prevented, bear patiently with what has been granted by use and wont to all these cults in their societies: “ Revera, si divini cultus varia genera codera jure esse quo veram E 283 9 L I THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE .· i r* V* l·! iI I' urI Ί · . >· < r| I? e il r i *· · Ï9 · it is clear that heresy, no longer anti-constitutional simply as heresy, cannot be justly made the object of a constitutional repression, either on the initiative of the State or the injunction of the Church. This applies to any sort of repression whatever, and with all the more reason therefore to repression by the sword. But, on the hypothesis of a society aiming, as the medieval society did, at the political embodiment of the faithful alone, a society composed essentially, not merely accidentally, of none but members of the Church, heresy would not only be antagonistic to the Church, but of necessity and whatever its kind, it would be openly anti-constitutional, and hence deserving of consti­ tutional repression—a repression of which the Church, if need be, might remind the State as a duty. So that—and this is the point to be noted—it could never become a duty for the secular arm to be lifted against heresy save only when this appeared to be undermining the basic temporal order of society.1 religionem. Ecclesia judicat non licere, non ideo tamen eos damnat rerum publicarum moderatores qui, magni alicujus adipiscendi boni, aut prohibendi causa mali, moribus atque usu patienter ferunt, ut ea habeant singula in civitatem locum'* (Encyclical Immortale Dei, 1st November, 1885). It is not said—to say it would be to fall into the error of theological liberalism—that “ because all human opinions of whatever kind have a right to be taught and propagated, the commonwealth is bound to recognize as licit for each spiritual group the law worked out for that group according to its own principles.” But to me this principle signifies that in order to avoid greater evils (which would be the ruin of the community’s peace and lead to the petrifaction—or the disintegra­ tion—of consciences) the commonweal could and should tolerate (to tolerate is not to approve) ways of worship more or less distant from the truth: ritus infidelium sunt tolerandi was the teaching of St. Thomas; ways of worship and also ways of conceiving the meaning of life and modes of behaviour; and that in consequence the commonwealth would decide to accord to the various spiritual groups which live within it the juridical status which the city itself in its political w isdom adapts on the one hand to their condition, and on the other, to the general line of legislation leading towards the virtuous life, and to die prescriptions of the moral law, towards whose fulfilment in the fullest obtainable degree it should endeavour to direct this diversity of forms . . . Thus the commonwealth would be vitally Christian, and the various non-Christian spiritual groups included in it would enjoy a just liberty” (J. Maritain, True Humanism, pp. i6o-i6t). To illustrate this doctrine the same author elsewhere examines the case of the polygamous customs of the Camcroons: “If it is true that the colonising power may not impose on the natives, without introducing greater evils, the Christian law of monogamy, it is equally true that while recognising the ‘ fetishist ' and Moham­ medan marriage it ought not only, as convert natives grow more and more numerous, to recog­ nize in their case also the Christian law (which it does not yet do), but it ought also to orientate the personal law of fetishists and Mohammedans in the direction of true moral and social prin­ ciples, by limiting by positive prescriptions the ravages of polygamy and by promoting at the same time everything that tends to an improvement in morals” (J. Maritain, Freedom in the Modem World, p. 66). 1 “ Every heresy, outwardly manifested, whatever the name of the sect, was considered as a public crime, a social offence, and punished as such; for every heresy*, whatever it might be, even when it had only a speculative character, was, and was considered at this time as, an offence against the public order since it tended to break up religious unity, which was, and was regarded as, the primary social bond, the foundation of society. Rightly or wrongly it was religious unity that constituted the unity of the fatherland’ ’ (L. Choupin, S.J., Valeur des décision^ etc., p. 536). The constitution Inconsutilem Tunicam Dei Nostri of Frederick II, approved by Innocent IV in 1243, declares that the crime of heresy should be reckoned among public crimes, inter publica crimina; that it is worse than lèse-majesté because it is the divine majesty that is attacked, although before the law one does not surpass the other [quamvis judicii potestate, alterum alteri non excellat]; and that it should be punished like the crime of high treason [nrizh perduellionis aimen] (Bullarium Romanum, Turin 1858, vol. Ill p. 5θθ)· 284 CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER If moreover—and here is the second condition—the death penalty is provided for the highest crimes against the temporal good of society, it is clear dial the secular arm could punish the heretic with death, and that the Church, at need, could remind it of its duty; and more readily on this point than on others, since what heresy destroys is the faith, the supreme political value in a consecrational regime. In fact, it was not the Church, but the secular arm itself—and under the most sceptical of princes—which, in the Middle Ages, legally extended the death penalty to the crime of heresy.1 Finding this penalty received and in force the Popes did not declare it unjust. Did they thereby betray the Gospel? Yes, if the Gospel forbids the State ever to use the death penalty: and then St. Paul himself would have betrayed it. Otherwise, no. For at this period heresy appeared as one of the gravest of political disorders, and if the legitimacy of putting the malefactor to death was to be contested, that should have been done in connection with such crimes as theft and coining, and not in connection with heresy. If we take due account of these two points—the basically anti-consti­ tutional character of medieval heresy, and the legitimacy of the death penalty —we shall recognize the defensibility not only of the ancient Corpus, but also, in all essentials, of the conduct and jurisprudence of the Popes them­ selves in encouraging the secular arm to deal with heresy by capital punish­ ment. We say “in essentials” because it will remain for the historian to appreciate in each individual case, the manner in which the jurisprudence was applied, and the abuses to which it lent itself.2 1 Historically it was not the Church that introduced the death penalty for heresy. It had a popular origin. It passed into the penal code, into the laws, with Frederick II under the influence of legists who were reviving the Roman Law, by the successive constitutions of 1224 for Lombardy, of 1231 for Sicily, of 1232 for the whole Empire. The measures taken by Frederick II were approved by Gregory IX—who soon found himself forced to excommunicate the Emperor—and then by Innocent IV. cf. Choupin, op. ch., pp. 491-2; Vacandard, L Inquisition, pp. 129-131. 2 St. Thomas’ reasoning proceeds under the double supposition (1) of a State consecrationally Christian, and (2) the legitimacy of the death penalty* for crimes against the State. To neglect these suppositions is to condemn oneself to understand nothing of his thought, and to see no more in his argumentation, for all its clarity, than a subject for scandal. In IV Sent., dist. 13, q. 2, a. 3, “ Whether heretics should be tolerated ”, he carefully distin­ guishes the competencies involved. “ Heresy is a contagious evil; and as for heretics says St. Paul, ‘ their speech spreadeth like a canker’ [2 Tim. ii, 17]. That is why the Church excludes heretics from the society of the faithful, especially when they set out to corrupt others. For fear that they may pervert simple the Church gets rid even of their bodily presence by shutting them up or expelling them; if it were not for this danger they might be ignored. Those who are firm in the faith may converse with heretics and try* to convert them; but without taking any part in their worship since they are under excommunication. The civil tribunal may licitly put them to death and confiscate their goods; and this even when they* arc not going about to pervert others. If they blaspheme God, if they follow a false religion, they deserve punishment much more than those who arc guilty of lèse-majesté or who coin false money.” In the Summa (II-II, q. 11, a. 3) St. Thomas speaks first of the punishment the heretics deserve, and then of the mercy of the Church: “ By reason of their sin they deserve not only to be separated from the Church by excommunication, but also to be severed from the world by death.” He goes on to prove this second assertion. For a political society made up exclusively of the faithful ” it is [even politically] a much graver matter to corrupt the faith which quickens the soul, than to forge money which supports temporal life. Wherefore if forgers of money and other evildoers arc forth­ with condemned to death by the secular authority, much more reason is there [here St. Thomas argues a fortiori, but Vacandard, who overlooks the fact, writes that he ” only brings forward a com- 285 III THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE d. The Thirty-third Proposition of the Bull Exsurge Domine ? ». »·. : ♦* . i H A word nowr on the Thirty-third Lutheran proposition condemned on the 15th June 1520, in the Bull Exsurge Domine’. “The burning of heretics is against the will of the Spirit.”1 In the eightieth conclusion of his Resolutiones Disputationum de Indulgentiarum Virtute, addressed in 1518 to Leo X, Luther protests against the interpretation which put two swords, one spiritual and the other material, into the hands of the Sovereign Pontiff. For Luther, the two swords are the Spirit and the Gospel. In our day, he adds, what we seem to want “is not to destroy heresies and errors, but to bum the heretics and the misled, following less the counsel of Scipio than that of Cato who wanted to see Carthage destroyed. We even go against the will of the Spirit, who wrote that the Jebusites and Canaanites were left in the promised land so that the children of Israel could learn to make war and keep their warlike skill, by which are prefigured, if St. Jerome does not mislead me, the wars of the heretics. In any case, the Aposde is to be believed when he says : There must needs be heresies. But we say, on the contrary, that the heretics must be burnt. .As if we had to pluck up the roots along with the fruits, the cockle along with the corn.”2 These reflec­ tions were condensed into the condemned proposition: “It is against the will of the Spirit that heretics arc burnt.” It is to be noted first that Luther did not deny either that the Spirit punishes the reprobate in the fires of hell, nor that the true heretics are deserving of hell; so that in a sense (which doubtless is not in question here) Luther’s proposition might have appeared false even in his own eyes. It may be further remarked that having begun by saying that the heretics parison that docs duty for proof ” (L'Inquisition, p. 208;] for heretics to be not only excommunicated by the Church but put to death by the secular authority as soon as they are convicted”. And yet what does the Church do? She docs not condemn them straightaway, for she desires the conversion of the sinner, but she does so only after die first and second admonition as the Aposde directs; after that the Church no longer hopes for the heretic's conversion but looks to the salvation of others by excommunicating him and “ separating him from the Church, and furthermore delivers him to the secular tribunal to be exterminated thereby from the world by death”. So, w hen she finds herself faced with relapsed heretics she admits them always» without doubt, to penance, but makes no further effort to keep them from sentence of death. The whole aim of the fourth article is to establish that there is no necessary sin against charity in punishing them by death through the secular arm. Vacandard'$ failure to understand these texts of St. Thomas is surprising. He reproaches him for giving us a comparison in place of a proof, and objects that it would serve the purpose to replace the death penalty by life imprisonment; or, if it were necessary to strike terror, “ even repentant heretics might be condemned to death at the outset He concludes: ” Evidently, St. Thomas . . . has but one aim: to legitimize the criminal discipline of his time. And that is his excuse. But it must be recognized that be has seldom been so ill inspired. His theses on the coercive power of the Church and the punishment of heresy arc disconcertingly weak” (L'Inquisition, p. 211). More happily inspired, no doubt, die same author nevertheless w*rote at the end of his book: “ The system of defence and protection which she [the Church] adopted in die Middle Ages, succeeded, at least partially. It is enough diat it was not essentially unjust that she docs not have to disown it as immoral” (ibid., p. 310). 1 Denz., 773. 1 Op. Lal., Jena ed., 1564, vol. I, p. 114. CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER should be overcome by the Scriptures and not by fire, Luther soon changes his inind and maintains (and with him the Protestant theology of the six­ teenth century) that if they resist Scripture, heretics—in this case the Ana­ baptists—should be put to death, even when not seditious; and the Saxon law provided the punishment of fire preceded by torture to make them reveal their accomplices.1 But let us come now to the heart of our subject. Against Luther, who was maintaining that the heretics could not, in those days, be put to death without defying the Holy Spirit, Leo X affirmed the existence of a right in those days to apply the death penalty to heretics. Who had that right? Not the Church. It belonged to the Christian State. The Church judged of heresy and called on the State to perform its temporal duties.12 The theses mentioned in the Bull Exsurge were condemned by the Pope “as respectively heretical, or scandalous, or false, or as likely to shock pious ears and seduce simple minds.”3 What note of condemnation attached to the thesis that heretics could not be put to death? Certainly a lesser note than heresy; like the thesis immediately following: “To fight against the Turks is to fight against God who, through them, punishes our iniquities”— a thesis which also would soon be violently disowned by its author. To call on the secular arm to defend Christendom against its enemies within and without, against the heretics and against the Turks, then seemed to be a piece of prudence not to be rashly dismissed. e. Recourse to the Secular Arm in the Manner of the Church and the Manner of the · State: from St. Augustine to St. Thomas Let us be still more precise. How are we to understand the respective responsibilities of Church and State in applying the punishment of death? Did the Church take the immediate responsibility of the initiative, using the State as an instrument, a tool, for the direct procurement of her own good, and then secondarily of that of the State? Or did the Church content herself rather with inviting, even requiring4 the State to do its duty as a medieval Christian state—a state constitutionally composed of Christians—to act of itself, as a principal cause, under its own responsibility, to procure its own temporal good directly, and the spiritual and higher good of the Church secondarily? In the first case it would have to be said that the antisocial 1 H. Grisar, S.J., Luther, London 1913-17, vol. VI, pp. 248-68. 2 Luther’s reply to Leo’s condemnation really established only one thing: that the Church as such cannot have recourse to the punishment of death (Assatio Omnium. Articulorum pa Bullam Leonis X Pfafasimam Damnalnum, December 1520, Opera, Jena ed., 1566, vol. II, p. 309)· 3 Bullarium Romanum, Turin i860, vol. V, p. 752. 4 Counts, barons, rectors, and consuls had to swear to apply, according to their power, the ecclesiastical and imperial decrees against heretics: those who broke their oath were deprived of their office and excommunicated, and lheir lands placed under interdict (Decretal Ad Abolendam, Decretals, cap. Lx, “ De Haereticis ”, lib. V, lit. vii). Under Boniface VIII the temporal lords and their representatives who set themselves in opposition to the bishop or the Inquisitors were ex­ communicated, and if they did not yield within a year they were themselves considered as heretics {Sexle, cap. xviii, “ De Haereticis”, lib. V, tit. ii). 287 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE t' · character of all heresy in the Middle Ages was but a conditio sine qua non of its repression by the secular arm, the formal motive of the repression being the directly anti-religious character of heresy. In the second case it would have to be said that the anti-social character of heresy was the formal motive of its repression by the secular arm. Thus, as has been said, recourse to the secular arm could be explained theoretically in more ways than one. It is not always easy for the historian to say which it was that prevailed. The official and canonical documents do not seem to suffice to settle it, for they often appear to support opposite conclusions.1 We must go the heart of the matter, and note the kind of action taken against heresy. If the repression is carried out in the manner of the Church, conformably, that is, with the deeper exigencies of the Church, so that the use made of intrinsically temporal penalties is overruled, moderated, and transfigured by purely spiritual influences and raised to the height of the spiritual, then the Church is acting as principal cause and the State is no more than an instrument. But if the repression is carried out in the manner of the State, conformably with the exigencies of the State and of its harsher means, so that the legitimate use of temporal penalties (for we are considering legitimate use alone) is abandoned to the gravitational pull of the temporal, then it is the State that is acting as principal cause, and the Church is merely stimulat­ ing it. That seems to be the rule. How is it to be applied? We may say that for St. Augustine, recourse to the secular arm was con­ ceived in the manner of the Church. The State was no more than the instrument of a cause directly religious and indirectly secular. Its proceedings therefore reflected the moderation and sanctity of those of the Church herself. If Augustine calls for the support of the secular arm, he tries at the same time to bring its intervention under the laws of a higher justice, more merciful than that which presides over purely temporal causes. He is afraid that the State docs not always act with the needful high-mindedness, sobriety and charity, that it does not sufficiently enter into the spirit of the Church, and may end by compromising her. He wants it to abstain from punishments involving mutilation and death, and to fall in with the Church’s horror of 1 For example Innocent III approves the Constitution Inconsutilem, punishing heresy as a crime against the State [perduellionis rrimtn]: and that means presumably that it was for the State to take the initiative against it. But Boniface VIII would not allow the temporal power either to take cognisance of, or to judge, the crime of heresy which is purely ecclesiastical cap. xviii, “ De Haereticis ", lib. V, tit. ii); and on 30th September i486 Innocent VIII ordered the magistrates of Brescia, under pain of excommunication, to execute the sentence passed on the heretics by the local bishop and the Inquisitor of Lombardy, while refusing these magistrates the right to control the proceedings, since the crime of heresy is purely ecclesiastical [nzn kujiumedi crimen haïrais sit mere ecclesiasticam] (Bullarium Romanian, Turin i860, vol. V, p. 326): that is to say, presumably, that the State is only the mandatory of the Church. However it is not difficult to solve the contradiction. It is for the Church alone to denounce heresy which, in itself and abstractly, is a “ crimen mere ecclesiasticum ". But if it be true that in the historical Middle r\ges every heresy is a crime against the State, “ perduellionis crimen ", it suffices for the Church to indicate the fact of heresy to lay on the State the duly of intervening, not necessarily as mandatory of die Church, but on its own account and in its own name. 288 wqwWRggg* CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER blood. To the tribune Marccllinus, then sitting in judgment on the Donatists who, having kidnapped two Catholic priests, had killed the first and mutilated the second by putting out an eye and cutting off a finger, St. Augustine wrote about 412 that he was very anxious “lest perchance your excellency should judge them worthy, according to the laws, of punishment not less severe than the injuries they had inflicted upon others. Wherefore I implore you by your faith in Christ, and by the mercy of Christ the Lord Himself, by no means to do this or permit it to be done. For although we might silently pass over the execution of criminals who need not be regarded as brought up for trial on any indictment of ours, but by those to whose vigilance the preservation of the public peace is entrusted, we do not desire the sufferings of the servants of God to be avenged by the infliction of precisely similar injuries by way of retaliation. Not that we object to preventing these wicked men from com­ mitting further crimes; but we desire rather that justice be satisfied without taking their lives or maiming their bodies in any part, and that, by such coercive measures as the laws prescribe, they may be turned from their in­ sane frenzy to the ways of peace, or compelled to give up their violence and betake themselves to some useful labour. This is indeed called a penal sen­ tence; but who does not see that when a constraint is put on the boldness of savage violence, and the remedies fitted to produce repentance are not with­ held, this discipline should be called a benefit rather than a vindictive punishment?”1 In the Contra Cresconium (about 406), St. Augustine had even declared that “it does not please good people in the Catholic Church when an evil man, even a heretic, is put to death”.2 But how arc these texts, especially the last, to be understood? Does Augustine set himself absolutely against the death sentence? No, since towards 413 he recognized its lawful­ ness in a text of the De Civitate Dei cited above. Does he wish to deny the Church the right to authorise the use of the sword in any circumstances? He does not say so, and we cannot attribute the view to him. He desires simply that the sword should not be used when some other punishment will suffice; and he does not consider that its use against heresy is just or suitable for times like his, when the Christian world is not yet politically organized. He tries to spiritualize the action of the State as far as may be before putting it at the service of the Church, even to absorb it in a way into that of the Church. Above all, if the State is merely the mandatory of the Church he would not have it defend her by the sword. For then indeed the maxim is valid: “Illud ab co fit, cujus auctoritate fit.” Things were different in the Middle Ages. It was no longer a case of a government’s favouring Christianity, but ruling over a mixed body of Christians and pagans. Western society is now altogether Christian. It is Christian in constitution. Heresy, more than ever before, has become a political crime. The medieval State is forced to protect itself against it, for it endangers the very principle of its existence. If it is not to perish it must mobilise the means of defence at its disposal; and these means are harsh. 1 Epist. CXXXIII, I. * Lib. HI, 55. 289 > THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE Politically, and therefore morally, it may justly defend itself; and it is even its duty to do so. And the Church, which then to a great extent depended on the State for the conditions of her biological existence, could at need recall it to its duty. The repression of heresy in those days was effected in the manner of the State, to safeguard the good of the State in the first place, and that of the Church, so much more precious in herself, in the second. The responsibility therefore fell directly on the State and not on the Church. The Church was responsible for recognizing and approving a political structure incorporating none but Christians (Jews and pagans being held at arm’s length), and one therefore in which heresy, should it unexpectedly crop up, would seem a crime against the State; but we cannot say that the Church, at any given moment of her historical existence, should from the first have refused to recognize as legitimate a society composed of none but the faithful. There was nothing sinful in such an experiment. Again, the Church was responsible for having recognized the legitimacy of the death penalty for crimes against the State; but here too the Church acted rightly. In this sense, then, the Church was responsible for the death of heretics; but evidently only by way of an after-effect and essentially indirectly. She cannot justly be saddled with the real responsibility. In virtue of the political and historical condi­ tions of the Middle Ages it lies squarely on the secular power. It was for the latter to punish heresy as a crime against the State when the Church had punished it as a religious offence by excommunication. And things were such that at the beginning, when the secular power attempted to shirk its duty, as happened more than once, it failed in one of its principal tasks, that of safeguarding the common good and the public safety. I say “at the beginning”, and for as long as the states were constitutionally composed of the faithful alone; for later on, when their populations became of necessity mixed, the moral obligation to civil repression of heresy automatically lapsed. Thus then, in St. Thomas’ day, the State acted, or at least was held to act, on its own account in dealing with heresy. Certain precautions taken by the canonists whereby, on handing over the delinquent, they invited the secular courts to stop short of effusion of blood and the death penalty, might lead us to think that the ecclesiastical power considered itself still as primarily and principally responsible for the treatment inflicted on the heretics.1 But these are formulas of an age that had long passed away. By the time of Gregory IX, and much earlier no doubt, the effective responsibility for the punish­ ment of heresy had passed to the secular powers, and the expression brachio saeculari relinquere is not in the least to be taken as a legal fiction, still less 1 “ The formula by which they [the Inquisitors] rid themselves of an impenitent or relapsed heretic ran thus: 4 We dismiss you from our ecclesiastical court and abandon and hand you over to the secular arm. Yet we pray, and that effectually, the secular court to moderate its sentence so tliat it avoids the shedding of your blood and danger of death.' The secular judges, unfortunately, were not able to take this formula literally· If they had tried to do it they would have been recalled to reality by excommunication. The casuists* clause deceived nobody ” (E. Vacandard, L'Inquisi­ tion, p. 214). 290 CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER an hypocrisy, but meant just what it said. That is the opinion of many theologians to-day? I think it was that of St. Thomas himself; there is nothing in his writings to oblige us to rank him among those who threw the juridical responsibility for the death penalty on the Church.2 To sum up: when punishments are moderate and still keep something of the air of paternal correction, that is a sign that the Church herself is taking the responsibility for the chastisement of heresy and is treating the State as a mandatory. But when the sanctions become heavier and more terrible, that is a sign that the State, under no matter what legal formula, is now the princi­ pal partner in the business of repression and has undertaken to conduct it in 1 cf. L. Choupin, S.J., Valeur des décisions etc., p. 525. Some of these theologians, and we think with good reason, even refuse the Church the right of decreeing (and a fortiori of herself inflicting), the punishment of death. Thus Mgr. Douais, cited by L. Choupin, op. cit., p. 519: “ The question is not whether, theoretically, the Church would not have been competent to inflict the punishment of death. Theologians and canonists may discuss it if they like; if they grant the Church this juridical power, like Suarez, it is of small importance to us: pure theory, nothing more. As for me, I do not grant it. . . but what is my opinion worth? In reality, the Church has never admitted the penalty of death into her law (that is to say into the Corpus Juris). She has indeed resolutely put it aside.” Even if we recognize that the Church has the right to punish by death, it does not follow that in fact she has ever exercised it. 2 Suarez does not hesitate to throw the responsibility for the death of heretics on the Church. He asks himself: who could inflict this punishment on them?—and answers that the power resides in the Sovereign Pontiff principally, in an eminent manner, as in him who commands and gives the impulsion; then, in the temporal prince in a proximate manner, in subordination to the spiritual power, as in him who executes and receives the impulsion {De Fide, disp. 23, sect. 1, no. 7). How­ ever, neither Charles V nor Philip II understood it in this way. On the Inquisition set up in 1481 by the Catholic kings, it has been said: “ Very different in this respect from the Inquisition in other lands, its end was at once political and religious. Through the heretic it aimed at the foreigner. It was thus an essentially Spanish institution and if we are to judge it equitably we must take account of this double rôle. It was also always popular with the Spaniards who were grateful to it for safeguarding the purity of their race and faith. Suspect to die Popes, it was dear to die Kings, whose political designs it served while protecting the interests of religion. It was die jealous guardian at once of orthodoxy' and of nationality” (J. H. Mariejol, “ L’Espagne”, in the Histoire générale of E. Lavisse and Λ. Rambaud, Paris 1894, vol.IV, p. 332). I myself tlrink that the repression of heresy had a political character everywhere arid not only in Spain. But certainly it was in Spain especially that it took on the character of a “ national purification”. The nature of the Spanish Inquisition has been much discussed. From the fact that the sentence of death was passed only by the royal tribunal and diat the goods of the condemned were con­ fiscated to the profit of the royal treasury, Joseph de Maistre concludes diat “ the tribunal of the Inquisition was purely royal ” {Première lettre à un gentilhomme russe sur Γ Inquisition espagnole). Pastor protests against this view. He recalls that “ no Pope has condemned the Spanish Inquisition in itself, but many for these abuses . . that “ many, on the contrary, have spoken in its favour ”, that its practice of handing over the condemned to the secular arm proves that it was also a religious tribunal; he concludes that the Spanish Inquisition appears as a “mixed, but primarily eccle­ siastical institution ” {History of the Popes, London 1894, vol. IV, pp. 400-403). The truth surely is clear. The Spanish Inquisition did not differ in essence from the medieval Inquisition. The Church was responsible for the one only in the same measure in which it was responsible for the other. But the mode in which the Spanish Inquisition functioned had a special character. After they had forced Baptism on the Jews the Catholic kings perceived that the Spanish nation and the Catholic religion were in great danger from pretended converts. To remedy this they obtained from Sixtus IV in 1478 an authorisation to set up the Inquisition in Spain. Its activities soon became infected with the nationalist passion. On 29th January 1482, Sixtus IV himself began to protest against the doings of the Inquisitors. On the 2nd August 1482 the Pope put out another Brief which ended with these words: “ As it is mercy alone that makes us like to the Lord God, we beg and exhort the King and the Queen, for the love of Jesus Christ, to imitate him whose property it is always tn have mere)’ and to spare ” (cf. Pastor, loc. cit). 29I THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE I J!' its own way. It is significant that it was the Emperor Frederick II who lega­ lised the use of the death penalty and of the stake against the heretics. Even if one had to grant with Suarez (which I do not) that the Church was the principal agent in the application of the death penalty, it would remain clear after all that has been said, that she was prompted only by the peculiar political situation in the Middle Ages—a situation which, on Suarez’ supposition, played the part, not as I believe of “formal motive” but at least of condition sine qua non for the intervention of the Church. But dien the Church, as we must recognize, would have undertaken very heavy repressive proceedings. Too heavy, in my opinion at least, to leave her holiness untarnished. Moreover the State, then functioning only as an instru­ ment, could have taken none of this responsibility’ upon itself. We should then have had to attribute it, not to the sins of the Church, but to the sins of her representatives, the sins of the hierarchy. The Church in the person of her Popes, says Vacandard somewhere; the expression is just, but could be taken equivocally. For, in those of their proceedings which w'ould be blameworthy in God’s eyes, or manifestly tainted with error or injustice,1 the Popes do not represent Christ; they are not the Church. However, fortunately we have no need to fall back on this extreme solution. Here it may be remarked that the attitude of the Pope and the bishops seems to be different in the case of a judicial condemnation to death for heresy, and in the case of the holy war, of the Crusade against the heretics or the Mussulmans. In the first case the ecclesiastical tribunals handed over the delinquent to the secular arm. In the second we shall see the Pope or his legate positively directing the operations of the Crusade. That is why we attribute the responsibility for the judicial punishment of heretics to the secular power. This solution will not serve for the Crusades. There the responsibility' rests on the legate and finally on the Pope—considered, it is true, not as head of the Church but as protector of Christendom. If the facts demanded it, there would be no objection from a theological standpoint to the adoption of this last solution to explain the judicial punishment of heresy: the secular power would then be an instrument in the hands of the Pope, as Suarez would have it—but of the Pope considered as protector of Christendom and not as Vicar of Christ. My chief preoccupation here once more is not to detail the facts as an historian would do, but to bring out the theological explanation they require when looked at in the light of the subsequent evolution of theological doctrine. f. The Relation of the Pagan Empire to Christianity Unlike that of Medieval Christen­ dom to Heresy If it be now objected that Christianity' had formerly overthrown pagan society, just as heresy overturned the Christian society, and that in conse­ quence, according to our principles, the pagan State had the right to persecute 1 And it is die State, not the Church, which they would represent when acting as temporal princes or as protectors of Christendom. 202 s£??· · i £-? s u CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER t the Christians, the reply will be that from the standpoint of a pure political empiricism the two situations did in fact present similar characteristics, and that once the legitimacy of a State essentially and constitutionally pagan is admitted, it must indeed be granted the right to punish Christians as guilty of the crime of Rse-majestc:1 not all the persecutors were wholly possessed by the spirit of hatred, and many, no doubt, resembled that proconsul who warned Cyprian to have a care for his life, and to whom the saint serenely replied: “Do what you have to do.” But the error would consist precisely in this empiricism. We must tread warily: the debate is not solely, or even directly, religious. It does not con­ sist in asking whether medieval heresy had the same rights against Christi­ anity as Christianity had against the old paganism: the answer is clear, but leaves intact the question whether we are to form the same estimate of the death penalty as used against the first Christians and as used against the first heretics. This question is directly political and indirectly religious: it consists precisely in asking whether the pagan Empire could as legitimately defend itself against the Christians as the medieval regime could against the heretics: we must take pains to discover, said St. Augustine, in a textaiready mentioned, not whether anybody is constrained, but in what cause he is constrained, whether in that of good or of evil, of justice or injustice. This raises the whole question of the legitimacy of the pagan Empire. My answer is that this Empire was politically legitimate to the extent to which it assured, doubtless with numberless deficiencies, a certain common good, a certain authentic political order. In this sense St. Paul could write to the Romans themselves that “authority comes from God only, and all authorities that hold sway are of his ordinance. Thus the man who opposes authority is a rebel against the ordinance of God”, that “the magistrate is God’s minister, w'orking for thy good”, and that we must be subject “not only for fear of punishment, but in conscience” (xiii. 1-7). Now, the first Christians had no intention of overturning this authentic political order; they tried, on the contrary, to respect it, as the first apologists remarked, and they safeguarded it as far as they could when their numerical growth entailed the foundation of a new political regime. But the pagan Empire was politically illegitimate to the extent to which it protected paganism against Christianity, and politically and constitutionally conditioned the existence of one of the worst religious aberrations, one moreover in which the rulers did not themselves believe. In this sense St.John compared it to the Beast issuing from the sea, blasphem­ ing against God, warring with the saints and having power over the whole earth (Apoc. xiii. 1-8). Thus, from the standpoint of a political science that 1 “ The juridical terminology of the Romans had no equivalent for apostasy from the national religion. The expression crimen laesae Romanae religionis, which occurs in Tertullian, gives us the right idea, but then it was not a term in general use. The crimen laesae majestatis (high treason) was, on the contrary, well defined by the law. At the time under consideration, and in the conditions existing when the difficulty arose, there was little difference between the two . . . as a matter of fact, Christians were denounced, hunted out, judged and condemned, simply as Christians ” (L. Duchesne, The Early History of the Church, London 1914, vol. I, pp. 80-1). 293 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE ». would transcend empiricism, of a large and integral politics, the persecuting edicts appear unjust and the conduct of the Emperors monstrous. That cannot be said of medieval society. Its constitution politically conditioned the existence of Christianity and not of a religious aberration. Heresy, in overturning it, had neither the intention nor the power to replace it by any other Christian political constitution. If, in ruining medieval Christendom, it prepared a future Christendom, the Christendom of to-morrow, it was not in any direct and constructive manner, but indirectly and blindly. It ap­ peared, politically, as the opposite of a legitimate movement. The State could take severe measures against it without injustice. 3. TORTURE AND CRUELTY IN THE MIDDLE AGES >1 i * I · Let us sum up what has been said on the medieval repression of heresy. First, the laws of the Corpus Juris, which nowhere mention the death penalty and provide for abandonment to the secular arm only for other punishments, such as confiscation of goods and imprisonment, do not seem unreasonable. The jurisprudence of those Popes who, from Gregory IX onward, approve the secular power for its spontaneous introduction of the death penalty for heretics, and go so far as to recall it to its self-imposed duty, seems to me also justifiable, so long at least as this jurisprudence has the character of an authen­ tic measure of public safety, and provided one observes the first rule of sound history and puts events into their historical context. But what then are we to say of the jurisprudence of these same Popes when it sanctions the use made by the civil tribunals of the barbarisms of the stake and the torture chamber? Are we obliged to justify' it? Here the question becomes more complex. a. The Middle Ages and Modem Times Without wishing to pass a comprehensive judgment on the morals of the Middle Ages in order to compare them with those of other times, we have, to start with, to note a fact. Alongside characteristics whose nobility and deli­ cacy win all admiration, the Middle Ages present us—e.g., in penal customs and methods of suppressing disorder—with brutalities, cruelties and bar­ barisms which revolt our sensibilities and provoke our indignation.1 And we are right to be scandalized; but that does not mean that our modem conscience is necessarily, on the whole, and in the sight of the angels, more 1 How could this barbarity in "penal customs co-exist with so much sweetness of feeling? Con­ sider, for example, the wonderful human tenderness which illuminates the primitive French pictures of the fifteenth century; and then remember that at the same period, in the same people, the rack and the strappado were in full use. One might try’ to explain it perhaps by the fact that in ages of strong vitality passion bums with an equal intensity in extreme and opposed forms, such as gentleness and cruelty, even occasionally in the same man: or perhaps by the fact that Chris­ tianity, which has not yet had time to penetrate into certain lower regions of the collective soul, was received with so much the more fervour, purity, completeness in the higher regions of this same soul, represented by the contemplatives and artists. Gustav Schnurer refers to the presence of these contradictions, especially in the fifteenth century, and he adds: “These discords clash violently with the measure and equilibrium which characterize the medieval ideal of humanity at its apogee. Their explanation is to be found above all in the fact that the people lacked direc­ tion and that its good and bad instincts alike were insufficiently held in leash ” (Kirche und Kultur im Siitulaltcr, 1st cd., Paderborn 1930, vol. Ill, p. 267). 294 CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER generous, more spiritual, more holy, more heroic, than the medieval cons­ cience—in a word, that it is better intensively', it means that, Christianity having quietly continued its work, a certain cultural progress has been achieved,1 so that the modern conscience is more alive to certain of its duties, and has become better extensively, at any rate in so far as it has not lost ground elsewhere. However that may be, this spirit of violence, the dregs of a barbarism which Christianity has not yet fully dissolved, the upsurge too of a barbarity that Christianity had repressed, overshadowed one whole side of medieval history, and ended by surrounding the most legitimate institutions and enterprises with an atmosphere of horror. For our modern imagination it is all concentrated in a single word: the Inquisition. b. Condemnation of Torture by Nicholas I: Its Revival Whence arose the use of torture in the tribunals of the Middle Ages? It “had left too many sorrowful memories in the minds of the Christians of the first centuries for them to dream of employing it in their own tribunals. With the exception of the Visigoths, the barbarians who founded the states of Europe knew nothing of this brutal method of judicial enquiry. At the most, they availed themselves of whipping which, according to St. Augustine, had a paternal and familial character.”2 In 866, in his Responsa ad Consulta Bulgarorum, Pope Nicholas I seized the opportunity offered him formally to condemn the use of torture, even in the civil tribunals. He declared it to be contrary to divine and human law.3 We see in which direction the influence of the Church was brought to bear at the outset. 1 Sec my Exigences chrétiennes en politique, Paris 1945, pp. 43θ_43· 2 E. Vacandard, L'Inquisition, p. 175. 3 “ You say that in your land, when a thief or a brigand has been arrested and denies his guilt, the judge has him struck on the head and pricked in the sides with hot irons until he confesses. But neither divine nor human law can in any way admit this [quam rem nec divina lex, nec humana prorsus admittit]. For confession should be free; it should not be extorted by violence but volun­ tarily proflcred. And then if after using these torments, you fail to discover anything, are you not ashamed and do you not see how impiously you judge? If, on the contrary, overcome by pain, the victim admits a crime he has not committed, on whom, I ask, falls the infamy of so great a wickedness if not on him who has forced the unfortunate man to lie? He who utters with his mouth what is not in his heart, may speak indeed but docs not acknowledge guilt. Drop these customs therefore and wholly condemn what hitherto you have done from ignorance 0 (P. L. CXIX, col. 1010). The Pope would have a criminal condemned on the evidence of three witnesses, and released if he cannot be convicted and swears his innocence on the Gospels. This doctrine of Nicholas I marks the progress of the Church from pagan darkness. The ancient world was habituated to the idea of torture and deemed it a necessary evil inseparable from judicial proceedings. Thus Augus­ tine could not but groan at the miscry of human justice: “ When the judge puts the accused to the question that he may not unwittingly put an innocent man to death, the result of this lamentable ignorance is that the very person whom he tortured that he might not condemn him if innocent, is condemned to death both tortured and innocent . . . and so he has both tortured an innocent man to discover his innocence, and has put him to death without discovering it. If society is plunged in such darkness will a wise judge take his scat on the bench or no? Beyond question, he will. For human society, which he thinks it a weakness to abandon, will hold him to his duty . . . for the wise judge does these things, not with any intention of doing barm, but because his ignor­ ance compels him, and because human society claims him as a judge. But though we therefore acquit the judge of malice, wc must none the less condemn human life as miserable *’ (De Civitate Dei, lib. XIX, cap. vi). 295 Kr.‘ ; v « I J '5 ? »! THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE The pagan spirit however made war on her. It was not dead everywhere. It struggled up once more to the light, penetrating into custom; it invaded secular, and even spiritual institutions. It was thus that the ordeal, accredited among the Germans, found its way gradually into the civil tribunals, and even into many of the local ecclesiastical tribunals.1 The punishment of burning, also in favour in German lands, was first inflicted on the heretics at the hands of excited crowds before it was legalised by Frederick II;* and when the Popes approved the measures taken by this Empcror against heresy, what they found themselves approving in practice was death at the stake. Torture had been condemned by the Church, but under the influence of the legists and the old Roman law it invaded the civil tribunals at the very moment when the Popes had got the upper hand of the ordeals. It was in­ flicted first on thieves and then on brigands. Then, with Innocent IV, the Popes ended by ratifying its use by the secular arm against the heretics.1 More generally speaking, it is the barbarity of all the penal codes and customs of the epoch that sickens us. The state of things may perhaps be well enough summed up by saying that the judicial machinery' in its entirety, though it was on the whole more useful than harmful, was nevertheless vitiated first of all in the civil tribunals, and then eventually in the ecclesiasti­ cal tribunals by practices too cruel not to be unjust, inhuman, and truly lamentable. 1 The Popes not only refused to have anything to do with it themselves, but sought to rid the ecclesiastical tribunals of it, and finally and effectually condemned it (A. Michel, “ Ordalies”, Diet. de thiol. calh., vol. XI, pt. I, col. 1147). 1 E. Vacandard, L'Inquisition, pp. 76 and 129. Was execution at the stake, as actually practised, any more cruel than other executions? The condemned did not “ mount ” the pile, he was sur­ rounded by it, and, we are assured, “ the quantity of combustibles generally used ensured a rapid death by suffocation ” (Léon-E. Halkin, u La cruauté des supplices de ΓAncien Régime ”, Revue catholique des idles et des faits, 23rd April 1937, pp. 14 and 15). ’ The twenty-fifth law of the Bull Ad Extirpanda of 15th May 1252, for Lombardy, Romagna and the March of Treviso, stipulates that the secular power is bound to force the heretics, short of mutilation and danger of death, to denounce their accomplices, as is the custom with thieves and brigands (Builarium Romanum, Turin 1858, vol. Ill, p. 556). As to torture, Vacandard gives some details in his book on the Inquisition: (1) It had to stop short of mutilation and death, p. 179; (2) it must not last for more than half an hour, p. 185; (3) confession under torture had no legal value; only one that followed was to count; (4) it was not to be inflicted at all unless the accused was under grave suspicion: to apply it without due consideration was held to be iniquitous and against the laws of God and man, p. 184; (5) Clement V, at the Council of Vienne, 1311-1312, required that before heretics could be sent for torture (tormentis exponere illos), there should be agree­ ment between the Inquisitor and the diocesan bishop, p. 186; (6) lastly, “ the canons of the Church forbade clerics to take part in these executions, so that the Inquisitor who, out of morbid curiosity or even for some laudable motive, should enter the torture chamber with the victim, contracted an irregularity from which he had to be released before he could resume his functions. The tribu­ nals undoubtedly grumbled at the complications caused by this division of labour in interrogating the accused ... On the 27th April 1260, Alexander IV gave the Inquisitors and their socii the power to release each other from all irregularities incurred. This was held to amount to authorisation to take part in interrogations conducted by violent means, and the Inquisitors no longer hesitated to appear in the torture chamber ” (pp. 183-184). But Vacandard is wrong when he writes (p. 187) that torture “ was administered by the tribunal of the Inquisition”. Z CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER c. Judgment on the Use of Torture Is our judgment on torture to be similar to that on the punishment of death? Clearly not, if the punishment of death is legitimate and if wc hold, with Pope Nicholas I, that torture cannot be justified under any law human or divine. How then should the Church historian estimate the conduct of those Popes who approved the action of the secular power in using torture to force heretics to denounce their accomplices? Two judgments are possible. An attentive study of the period will do one of two things. Either it will reveal that the employment of torture by the civil tribunals (whether inflicted on ordinary' criminals or on heretics is all one, since heresy was considered in the Middle Ages as a crime against the State) had penetrated so deeply into customary procedure, had become so “natural”, that it was practically impossible to call on the secular arm yet pretend to forbid its use. A true prudence (not that of the flesh) might then counsel a provisional tolerance of torture as of a lesser evil (as slavery had once been tolerated, as God Him­ self had tolerated polygamy in the Old Law), so as to leave the way clear for other and more urgent tasks; but without abandoning hope of a better regime in which to work effectually for its extirpation from judicial customs and penal codes. In that case the historian will certainly condemn torture, but he will not condemn the Popes who attempted to put the secular judicial and penal machine into action against the heretics before they could hope to make it less barbarous. “Every prudent man tolerates a lesser evil for fear of preventing a greater good.”1 Alternatively an attentive study of the facts will reveal that torture, instead of being tolerated as an inevitable evil, was approved and maintained at an epoch when it could, and therefore ought to have been, abolished. In this case the historian will be bound to condemn those who maintained it and to denounce a concession made to the powers of evil for which they alone should bear the responsibility before history, before the Church, and before God, who themselves acted violently and inhumanly, who sinned by weakness and lacked the energy to combat the spirit of cruelty around them, or perhaps simply lacked the perspicacity to discern the needs of their time and the immediate tasks to which they should have turned their hands. Thus then the strictest theology of the Church leaves the historian a complete liberty of judgment in this matter.2 It will ask him simply not to 1 St. Thomas, De Veritate, q. 5, a. 4, ad 4. 2 How can the historian speak without reservations of the Bull Cum Adversus of Innocent IV, 31st October 1243, approving the constitution Commissi Nobis of Frederick II, in which it is said that the sons of heretics shall escape the punishments provided by the law even against them— deprivation of goods, refusal of public offices and honours—if they denounce the secret heresy of their own father? (Bullarium Romanum, Turin 1858, vol. Ill, p. 505.) Or, in another domain, the measure of St. Pius V—otherwise so worthy of our admiration—forbidding physicians to go on visiting the sick who should not have confessed themselves within three days or were not in a position to present a certificate of confession? (ibid., 1862, vol. VII, p. 430.) It is impossible not to notice a progress in ecclesiastical penal legislation in humanity and respect for the human person, when these ancient laws are compared with our Codex Juris Canonici declaring that the faithful 297 1 * 1 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE attribute to the Church, but rather to our human misery, everything clearly erroneous and reprehensible uncovered by his researches. C. Summary » . ! It is impossible to speak of the coercive power of the Church, to call up the history' of its exercise, without a sense of depression. It could scarcely be otherwise. In raising this problem we have brought ourselves face to face with a form of evil that cannot but prove disturbing and oppressive even when it seems just and necessary—the evil of punishment, malum poenae. We cannot help feeling it. But if we see the malum poenae as a stain on the holiness of the Church, then we must sec the holiness of God as stained with it too. I. COERCION IN HELL One cannot read without a shudder the tremendous condemnations of the Gospel passed on those who, on the last day, shall be thrown into the fur­ nace of fire and devoted to eternal torment. But the evil lies not in God, but in the perversity of wills in revolt; on the one hand against the infinite and eternal holiness of God Himself, and on the other against the finite holiness of the order of the universe. The supreme punishments, therefore, cast no shadow on the divine holiness; this we know by divine faith. And yet this certitude cannot quieten our hearts in this world. Only in the direct vision of the divine essence will the problem of the final obduracy of the damned, and the correlative problem of eternal punishment, become in­ trinsically clear in the sight of men and of angels. 2. SPIRITUAL COERCION IN TIME Making all due allowances and modifications we may recognize an analo­ gous mystery’ in ecclesiastical penalties. Here again wc stand in the presence of a divine order, an order of love which, because it is never to disappear, tends to overcome and repress all adverse influences. The jurisdictional power founded by Christ has for its first mission the announcing of the good news of the Gospel (declaratory' power), and for its secondary mission the effectual organizing of the conduct of those who welcome this good news (canonical power). And the Kingdom of God in its wholeness, that is to say the divine order resulting from the descent of the Holy Trinity into history and from Its habitation among men, cannot, in virtue of a divine intention expressly signified in the Gospel, find its final perfection, its perfect realization, save by the integral functioning of the jurisidictional power, involving first a genuinely legislative power (whose essential and general decisions are ratishould avoid social relations with the excommunicated vitandi, 4 at any rate when there is no question of spouses, parents, children, servants, inferiors, or more generally unless these relations are justified by some reasonable cause ” (Can. 2267). 298 ■■H CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER fied in heaven), and in consequence a judicial and coercive power. When therefore those who have given their hearts to the Church begin to revolt against her laws, she is entitled to act against them and inflict penalties. These penalties, alway spiritual if you look to the power that decrees them and the end that justifies them, will be, in their immediate and intrinsic tenor, either directly spiritual—as excommunication, expressly provided for in Scripture—or else temporal, material. To deny this last point—to deny that the Church can decree, subject of course to the demands of pru­ dence according to time, place and circumstance, penalties that touch her subjects in the goods of fortune, in the goods of the body, in the use of liberty —would be to deny her power—always exercised of course, for spiritual ends —over the whole man ; it would be to deny her all power to descend into the realities of practical life, thereby limiting not only her coercive power but even her judicial and legislative power; lastly, it would be gravely to mis­ conceive her spiritual nature, for while this certainly forbids her to use temporal things in the manner of, and for the ends of, the State, it does not forbid but rather requires her to make use of them according to her own spiritual laws and for her own spiritual ends. There are here two errors to be avoided : that which denies the Church’s right to dispose of temporal things, contesting her character as a perfect and autonomous society, a kingdom effectively organized to exist in this world; and that which grants her the power of disposing of temporal things in the manner of and for the ends of the State; making her a kingdom of this world. If the jurisdictional power is divine, assisted—in a measure which I shall try to determine further on—even in its legislative, judiciary and coercive exercise, here, as before, we are in the presence of the most mysterious form of the malum poenae, since by man’s revolt the tilings that should bring him highest deliverance bring him only oppression from without and affliction from within. The exercise of the coercive power, moreover, even when just, prudent and generally irreproachable, even when confined to intrinsically spiritual penalties such as excommunication, runs the risk of irritating instead of amending the delinquent, and may thus occasion, indirectly, and on account of his own lack of virtue, an aggravation of the malum culpae, the evil of guilt. Finally, while every judgment immediately pronounced by God is infallible, it is certain that the exercise of the coercive power is divinely guaranteed only in a general way, for the general tendency of its decisions, but not for each particular case; so that these, through judicial error or the influence of passion, may sometimes be unjust. And the possibility of the least injustice in spiritual matters is a thing too terrible to contemplate, although wc know perfectly well that properly speaking it is not the Church that is to be blamed, but the ignorance or sin of her ministers. The penalties which the Church inflicts with her own hands, are, when considered intrinsically, spiritual and temporal. Among intrinsically spiritual or moral penalties we find, for example, deprivation of the sacraments, of the 299 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE sacramcntals, of ecclesiastical suffrages, of ecclesiastical burial, degradation, and so on. The intrinsically temporal or physical penalties are more variable. The Code actually mentions punishments touching external goods—fines1, deprivation of pensions2, of benefices’, obligation to alsmgiving4; touching bodily goods—fasts, pilgrimages’; and touching freedom—obligation or interdiction of residence in a given place *, obligation to make a retreat in a monaster}·7, surveillance®. The older usage of the Church provided for heavier penalties: imprisonment, beating (e.g., in the Rule of St. Benedict). It is to be noted on the one hand that the intrinsically temporal and physical punishments inflicted by the Church herself, appeared only in a rudimentary state to begin with, when the canonical powers had not had time to develop; and that, on the other, these same penalties became milder with the develop­ ment of the spirit of humanity, which is among the fine flowers of Christian charity as manifest on the plane of human culture. The sacramental penances themselves were formerly much heavier. As I have pointed out, the present Code, without forgetting the grave recommendations of the Gospel (Matt, xviii. 17), of St. Paul (i Cor. v. 2), and of St. John (2 John, ίο-n), is nevertheless careful to respect the human ties that may unite the faithful with one excommunicated, even vitandus. 3. RECOURSE TO THE SECULAR ARM Below the Kingdom of Heaven there are the kingdoms of this world; below the Church whose immediate ends are spiritual, there is a social order whose immediate ends are temporal. The Church is founded on grace; she confers those gifts that make us fellow citizens with the saints, members of Christ, the domestics of God; the social order is founded on nature, and confers the goods of civilization and culture. An abyss separates these two planes. The concepts of order, society, organism, happiness, justice, legisla­ tive, judiciary and coercive power, are applicable to both; not, however, in an identical sense, but analogically, in a sense essentially different though proportionally similar. Even when the temporal order opens itself, as it should, to the influence of Christianity, and tends to become a Christian temporal order, its own plane will never be that of Christianity, and its means of coercion will never be those of Christianity. How are we to explain the attitude of the Church when, in circumstances which need careful definition she has decided to call on the secular arm, on temporal powers of coercion? Such an attitude could take two forms. The intention of the Church in the first case would be to extend the field, in itself very narrow, of the temporal or physical punishments at her disposal. She would ask the State to lend her, to place in her hands for the time being, some of its own numerous means of physical coercion; so that she could turn 1 Can. 2291, §12. * ibid., §7. * Can. 2298, §6. ‘Can. 2313, §4. ‘ Can. 8 Can. ’Can. • Can. 300 2313, §§2 and 3. 2298, §8. 2313, §5. 23 J I. CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER them first to directly spiritual ends (the formal motive of the intervention), while the State, for its part, would reap its own temporal advantage (the absolute condition of the intervention). Suppose for example that the Church invokes the secular arm to put a stop to scandals and punish delinquencies proscribed by the divine law, but tolerated by the less exigent civil law. Then the secular arm would be functioning as an instrument of the Church. The responsibility for the consequences would fall on the Church (though, strictly speaking, no stain could ever affect her). But the Church would have tried at the same time to overrule the State’s coercive action, to set her own limits to it, to assimilate it to the spirituality of her own law. She would require moderation; she \vould forbid recourse to the death penalty and to bloodshed. If she called on the secular arm to chastise crimes particularly baneful and scandalous in a society composed exclusively of Christians, in which the average level of collective morality could be placed sufficiently high, the holiness of the Church would then be shown in her care to spiritua­ lize the temporal penalties she borrowed from the State, a care that clearly appears for example in St. Augustine’s recommendations to the tribune Marcellinus. An historian who wishes to deal with these appeals to the secular arm that went to augment the number of ecclesiastical penalties, ought to distinguish three great periods: in the first, the State was not yet Christian and there could be no question of the Church borrowing its means of coer­ cion; in the second, medieval period, the State, conceived as exclusively composed of Christians, could, without losing sight of its temporal vocation, lend the Church certain means of coercion which, for her part, she found it good hic et nunc to borrow for the better fulfilment of her spiritual mission; in the third, the State, even Christian, even Catholic, but no longer con­ ceivable as composed essentially and exclusively of children of the Church, cannot, by its own constitution, put its coercive power at the disposal of the Church.1 In the second case the Church’s intention would be to remind the Stale of the obligations of her temporal mission and of her duty to watch over the public safety (the formal motive and direct end of the intervention), whose ruin, in the given circumstances of place and time, would imperil the salva­ tion of many souls (the safeguarding of which would be the remote end of the intervention). We have already seen the principles involved in this sort of intervention (supra, pp. 250 and 274). 4. THE WAY OF THE CHURCH AND THE WAY OF THE STATE The historian will often have difficulty in recognizing the nature of the Church’s interventions. Is she borrowing means of coercion from the State? Is she simply recalling the State to its duty in defence of a gravely menaced 1 At any rate not by acts affecting the whole body of citizens as in the Middle Ages. A State of the pluralist type could be conceived as offering the Church her sen-ices to assure the execution of directly ecclesiastical ordinances concerning, not all the citizens indiscriminately, but those only who were Catholics. 301 :îw 5? —. THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE 4 if »>;l i ! R.· Si temporal common good? The difficulty of deciding will be so much the greater inasmuch as these two kinds of intervention seem at times to be mixed up. Certain great enterprises began in one manner and ended in the other, the dead weight of matter making them slip insensibly from the spiritual style proper to the Church to the temporal style proper to the State. It was thus that the medieval Inquisitors continued to make use of a formula of condemnation in which the secular arm was "‘efficaciously” recommended to avoid spilling blood and inflicting the punishment of death, when every­ thing, including the very inefficacy of this recommendation, showed that at this period the repression of heresy had become a directly temporal affair. It was thus that at the time of the Crusades, certain pilgrimages, begun in the spiritual mode, ended up in the temporal. If we confuse these two types of intervention on the part of the Church, and see their distinction as just another piece of intellectual by-play or a worthless subtlety, we shall fall into misconceptions impossible to remedy. We may then be led to saddle the Church with the responsibility for enter­ prises required by her, certainly, but to be conducted under the responsibility of the State and in the temporal manner of the State. We shall tend to forget the gulf that separates a Christian temporal order, however perfect, from a Christian spiritual order; the Christian States from Christianity; the ways of the kingdoms of this world from those of the Kingdom of Heaven. And then they will be right who, considering the medieval repression of heresy, re­ proach the Church for having stained her native purity, and having replaced evangelical means by political means, with having confused the Kingdom of Christ with the kingdoms of this world. But however much intermingled in practice these two modes of interven­ tion may be, they cannot be identified by the theologian. One of them may merge insensibly into the other as time goes on, and may often disguise itself under the same juridical formulas and within the same continuous web of history; we may hesitate to fix the precise point at which one replaces the other; each keeps its own character nevertheless, and is not to be reduced to the other. And it is this character that decides what has to be attributed to the Church or to the State, to God or to Caesar, in all the tangled complexities and variations of these appeals to the secular arm. 5. THE TWO REGIMES, CONSECRATIONAL AND SECULAR The political conditions required to justify the Church in calling on the secular arm for the repression of heresy suppose the existence of a temporal community essentially composed of Christian citizens alone. That is the first form of Christian State ever effectively contemplated. It was not destined to last for ever. The state of things has changed. The Church, which is divine, has retained her unity. But her children are no longer temporally gathered up into one country, or indeed into one culture. Within each country, within each culture, they find themselves closely united for the needs of temporal life 302 CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER with men of other religions, men who do not belong to the Church, not visibly at any rate. To make up for it, their numbers have grown and they are spread over the whole earth. Heresy therefore has ceased to be, as such, a crime against the security, the very existence, of the State. The political conditions of the Middle Ages have passed away, and along with them the legitimacy of any recourse to the secular arm for the repression of heresy. Between those times when recourse to the secular arm seemed to be neces­ sary' and legitimate, and those in which it had clearly ceased to be so, there was a lengthy period in which its legitimacy and usefulness might seem less evident, even disputable; sometimes and in some places it seemed to be opportune and in others not. Under such circumstances the question of how the canonical power is to behave, of the attitude it is to adopt, becomes a question of jurisprudence. If the assistance of the Holy Spirit extends to tins domain it does so only in a very general manner. Errors and faults are not hard to find ; and if one may judge the past in the light of the present one may think that it would have been better perhaps to come to an earlier resolution to limit tire use of coercive means, especially intrinsically temporal means, and to have given all the preference to those of charity and persuasion. “Men like Gandhi have given an example of what a technique of non­ violence, inspired by an advanced spirituality, can achieve even on the temporal plane. It is for us Christians to revive a truly authentic part of our heritage and learn how at once to protect the holiness of the Church and save the souls of our separated brethren, in an attitude toward them which is at once firm and charitable.”1 6. it! L f I ·' Ί C J' ■Jii * h! TORTURE It is certain, as Pope Nicholas I taught, that torture is contrary to the laws of God and man. It is certain on the other hand that later on it found en­ trance into medieval practice under the combined influence of paganism and the old Roman law. How then are we to judge the conduct of a Pope like Innocent IV who, finding it in use against thieves and brigands, notified the civil tribunals that they ought to apply it against heretics because they were politically more dangerous? There can be no question ofjustifying the use of torture. Nor is it sufficient to note that it was no sad monopoly of the Middle Ages, and that modem coercive institutions, under the influence of the sadistically inclined, have invented new forms of torture, often more subtle but certainly no less repulsive. All that can be said is that either torture had then become so common that it would have been practically impossible to forbid it to secular tribunals in the very act of asking their aid, and that it was therefore toler­ ated as a lesser evil; or that it could then, and consequently ought then, to have been abolished. In this case the responsibility for its use does not stop short at the State; it extends to the churchmen who failed in their mission and betrayed the ideal of the Church. It cannot in any case be laid on the Church 1 A. M. Dubarle, O.P., “ Faut-il brûler les hérétiques?", Vie intellectuelle, Jan. 1952, p. 5. SOS •I ! fl THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE herself. The errors of the canonical power in purely particular decisions, due to the deficiencies of its ministers, do not touch her inner sanctity. 7. WHAT THE CHURCH APPROVES AS RIGHTEOUSNESS IN THE STATE ABLE TO BE DEFILEMENT FOR HERSELF The Church has a doctrine on the coercive power applicable to herself as a Kingdom living in this world, though not of tliis world. This doctrine is righteous. She has another doctrine on the coercive power applicable to the kingdoms of this world. This doctrine too is righteous, but with another kind of righteousness. What is duly proportioned to the Christian State may not be proportioned to Christianity itself and to the Church; what is pure for temporal society is not necessarily so for the spiritual society, and the righteousness of the kingdoms of this world might be a stain on the Kingdom of Heaven. “You, who are an ecclesiastical ruler” said Cardinal Cajetan, “be careful first to rule con­ formably with the divine laws . . . You cannot, for the sake of the Church entrusted to you, be satisfied with this merely external order that leaves a secular ruler content . . . The Bride should be able to hear these words: Thou art fair, 0 beloved!”1 We shall fall into grave error if we forget these things. The coercive power of the Church is assisted in a general way and in respect of its exercise as a whole. It is not infallible in each particular case. Ignorance, error, sloth, cowardice, passion and injustice will all play a part there. For there are sinners in the Church and in the hierarchy, although in the Church there is no sin. The coercive power of the State, even the Christian State, is subject to even more defects. And what State, what tem­ poral order, has ever been fully Christian? If we bear these principles in mind we can look squarely at the problem of the Church’s coercive power: wc can welcome all the facts unearthed by the historians, and we shall have no fear of seeing the Church’s holiness effaced. She shines in the midst of evil like the sun in a mist. 3. THE HOLT ΙΓ.-1Λ ASD THE CRUSADE The origins of the Crusades are usually sought in the Christian pilgrimages to the Holy Places, pilgrimages which, on account of the hostility of the Mussulmans, were transformed into organized military' expeditions. But, says Carl Erdmann, if you want to go to the root of the matter and under­ stand the formation of the idea of the Crusade,2 attention should first be fixed on the effort made by the medieval Church to moralise the use of arms, and turn them to ends she could approve of. Under the pontificate of Urban II, one of those ends was the conquest of the Holy Places, to which the Pope attached the same indulgences as to the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, so that it 1 In I-Π, q. 99, a. 3, no. 5. 1 Dii Entstehung des Kreuzzugsgedankens, Stuttgart 1935. 3θ4 -------- a. CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER thereby acquired the value of a pilgrimage, cum armis Iherusalem peregrinati sunt.1 The idea of the Crusade is to be explained above all by the general attitude of the medieval Church to war; it crowns the elaboration of a Christian ethic of war. I propose first to deal with the very ambiguous expression “holy war”, then to study from a theological standpoint the gradual formation of the idea of a holy war, drawing on the assistance provided by Herr Erdmann’s work. I shall recall something of the history of the Crusade itself, then the famous texts of St. Bernard on the two swords. The way will thus be cleared to appreciate the part played by the Papacy in the military work of the Crusade, and to disentangle its theology. A. The Expression “Holy War” We are told that the Middle Ages gradually elaborated the concept of the “holy war”, a concept that was to come to maturity with the Crusades. Is this expression “holy war” a happy one? It looks slightly paradoxical in any case: “war” seems to envisage the taking of others’ fives by violence, whereas “holiness”, according to the Gospel, consists in giving one’s own life for love of others—how are the two ideas to be united? To make matters worse many further misunderstandings can arise: for their own convenience or for lack of theological analysis, historians too often lump together under the name of “holy war” enterprises which wc shall have to take care to distinguish. It is unquestionable, on the other hand, that in the Middle Ages the Church tried, and with some success, to purify, to rehabilitate, to Christi­ anize, this most astonishing—if not most disputable—and surely most secular of vocations: that of the soldier. She approved a certain use of arms. She even recommended it to the laity when grave dangers threatened Christen­ dom, just as insistently as she forbade it to clerics. If then certain military enterprises especially encouraged by the Church are to be called “ holy wars ”, the phrase is permissible, but on condition that it be first determined what precise part was played in the enterprise by the canonical, and what by the extra-canonical, powers of the clerics. It will then appear that “holy wars” are bound up with the existence or survival of a consccrational type of Christendom. I. WAR, DIABOLIC AND DIVINE Christianity’s first revelation concerning death—echoing that of Genesis ii. ijand iii. 19—sets it forth as the fruit of sin: per peccatum, morr(Rom. v. 12). And Christianity’s first glance at war was to be similar: war has its roots in sin. The formidable physical havoc it involves has its source in a hidden disorder still more terrible in the eyes of faith. It is the symptom of the interior and spiritual catastrophe of a people or of a civilization. Here we have the explanation of the contradiction that appears in war 1 ibid., p. 307, note 78. SOS THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE r ;·I t I * L'i according as we consider it in its source or in its consequences. Considering it in the sin that lies at its root, we shall call it free and voluntary, directly against nature, Satanic. But looking at its overwhelming effects on the world it will seem like a fatality, a law of nature, blind and irresistible, with all the air of being the outcome of a divine will. Diabolic or divine? It is both at once. It is diabolic, as is the sin whence it springs, and the great Pope, Nicholas I, could write to the Bulgarians in 866, in his famous Responsa which amount to a code of Christian politics: “The passions that produce war and batdes and the beginnings of all quarrels, are due without doubt to the fraudulent wiles of the deni, and only a man who is greedy for power, who is the slave of anger, envy or some other vice could seek for and rejoice in such things. Wherefore, save in cases of necessity, it would be well to abstain from fighting, not only in Lent but at all times.”1 And yet at bottom, Joseph de Maistre was not wrong in calling it divine, * and to consider it as a paradox so disconcerting that “ there is no way of explaining how it is humanly possible the only tiling to be said is that the fundamental laws of creation, when transgressed, take terrible and mysterious revenges. From this stand­ point war has all the aspect of a divine chastisement; it is divine in the sense in which hell is divine. Such abysses can only be opened up by the refusal of an infinite good. 2. WARS, JUST AND UNJUST: PEAGE STRONGER IN ITSELF THAN WAR If it is always sin that causes wars, it can unleash them in two very different ways. First by inspiring them, by informing them; and then they are unjust. The Scriptural malediction on murder, on all great offences against charity, hangs over them: “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire.” Second, by occasioning them, by making them necessary, but without inspiring them or directing them. Then the war will be just,3 a cruel necessity, legitimate violence opposing an illegitimate violence. It will remain a terrible thing, lamentable, a mark of opprobrium on mankind, for it presupposes sin somewhere.4 But it will be waged without sin ; it will be morally good,5 and it 1 P.L. XC1X, col. 998. 1 SrirZw de Saini-Peter .bowξ, η. I do not propose to justify the confusions of this chapter, but simply to disentangle the thread of truth. ’ The concept of a just war does not necessarily coincide with that of a defensive war. 4 “ But, say they, the wise man will wage just wars. As if he would not all the rather lament the necessity of just wan if he remembers that he is a man; for if they were not just he would not wage them, and would so be delivered from all wars. For it is the wrong-doing of the opposing party which compels the wise man to wage just wars; and tills wrong-doing, even though it gives rise to no war, would still be a matter of grief to man because it is man’s wrong-doing. Let every­ one who thinks with pain on all these great evils, so horrible, so ruthless, acknow'ledge that this is misery. And if anyone either endures or thinks of them without mental pain, this is a more miserable plight still, for he diinks himself happy because he has lost human feeling " (Su Augustine, De Cizitate Dei, lib. XIX, cap. vii). | MMH 5 Following St. Augustine, St. Thomas recalls die conditions for a just war: (t) it must aim at peace; so that a war, however just on other counts, would become absolutely illicit if waged only out of hate or ambition: (2) it must be undertaken for a just cause, for example to constrain a nation to repress great disorders or repair grave injustices; (3) it must be declared by the legitimate author- 306 CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER may therefore become meritorious. When the injustice of the adversary puts arms into the hands of the just, then the just will fight with hearts torn by the injustice out of which the need for the war arose. In any event, every just war will aim at peace: in the Christian outlook peace, in itself, is a higher, nobler, stronger work than war; and love, in itself, is stronger than hate.1 rity ; (4) on the manner in which a just war should be conducted St. Thomas notes that if it is permissible to use stratagems, that is to say to hide one’s designs from the enemy, it is never right to lie and perjure oneself; he adds, following St. Ambrose, that there arc certain laws of war and that belligerents should keep treaties (II-II, q. 40, a. 1 and 3). After reading this specification for a just war wc might well ask how many wars have been wholly just. Probably they could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Wemight perhaps be tempted to say, with André Malraux, that “ if there arc just wars, there arc no just armies”. Let us say rather that “just wars” are tainted more often than not with frightful injustices and lies. When they really deserve to be called just, it is in virtue of the first impulse that continues in a way to keep them on the right lines. It is a question of the dominant. In connection with the second of St. Thomas' conditions, wc may note that modern war, “ total ” war, is a good deal more like those exterminations carried on by a Ghengis Khan or a Tamerlaine, than the wars the old theologians disputed about. It is so destructive, so pregnant with material, spiritual and moral miseries, that the defence of some point of honour or right is not enough to justify it. For that, it would need, as Gustave Thibon writes in Études Carmllitaines, 1939, pp. 63-7, to be “morally inevitable”—the Christian would have to be faced with a choice “ between war, and the renunciation of his human nature ” and of his status as a Cliristian citizen. As to the first theological condition, the same author shows how difficult its observance is. For the war of the future “ will be waged for idols ”, fought between ideologies all claiming to be absolute: “ idols, for which men will die in pseudo-crusades, the issue of pseudo-religions, and the Christian will have to resist their seduction and refuse to prostitute his God to them. Too many impure voices cry to us already from the threshold of false temples: Christ is here, Christ is there.” And war “ will itself be an idol. An evil so atrocious and so universal, a course so straight to the abyss of nothingness, cannot be borne with unless it be erected into an absolute in hearts poisoned with hatred. Such a divinization of war will shake the two sacred bases of supernatural life in the soul of the Christian combatant: that Christian justice which judges no man, and that Christian love that goes out to all the world ... If war comes, the Christian will have to see to it that his desire to conquer goes hand in hand with an effort not to let himself be denatur­ alised—or rather, de-supematuraliscd—by war; he will have to keep his love while acting hate. It will not be easy: only saints will be fully capable of it.” These words, which have inevitably already dated to a certain extent, are surpassed in both precision and force by the Christmas Messages of His Holiness Pope Pius XII : “ All have a duty ... which is to do everything possible to outlaw aggressive war as a legitimate solution of international disputes and the instrument of national aspirations ” (1944); “ The precept of peace is of divine law; its end is the protection of the good things of humanity as the good things of the Creator. Now, among these good things, some are so important for the convivium of men among themselves that the defence of them against unjust aggression is, without doubt, fully legitimate” (1948); “ If humanity, conforming itself with the divine will, applies that sure means to security which is a perfect Christian order in this work I, then it will quickly sec the just war—even its very possi­ bility—vanish away, for practical purposes, for the just war will no longer have any raison d'ftre as soon as the activity of the Society of Nations, as an authentic organism of peace, is guaranteed ” (1951). See my own article La guerre et la paix selon renseignement de Pie XII ”, Nova et Vetera, 1952, p. 15, and V. Ducatillon, O.P. Des lois de la guerre à la guerre sans loi ”, Vie Intellectuelle, Dec. 1953, p. 5. 1 According to the old Germanic ideal, war is a vocation that is higher and nobler than peace. Erdmann considers that the entry into the Church of the Germanic peoples who, under (he cloak of Christianity, remained attached to the cult of heroes, to the glorification of vengeance, to the warlike ideal, impeded the progress of peaceful ideals in the West. The Germanic influence, he continues, showed itself positively by insistence on the warlike aspect of the cult of the Archangel Michael (Oriental in origin), and later, towards the end of the first millennium, by preparing the ideal of chivalry and the Crusades (op. cit., pp. 16—17). But is worth while to note that chivalry, as the Church understands it, may be a transfiguration ”, but cannot in any case be a appearance ”, a mere revival, of the pagan Germanic idea. 3°7 :·ί d THÉ CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE 3. THE CHURCH’S FIRST AND SECOND ACTION All this being so, the Church’s action could find but two points of applica­ tion. The first was to make every iniquitous war impossible.1 And the second, when war became inevitable and the only liberty left was to choose on which side to fight, was to hinder men’s choice of the unjust side. The feudal regime had multiplied armies: every lord was the head of a troop. Was he to fight for justice or for injustice, to be a brigand or a knight? It is clear enough why the great Cluniae reformers started the idea of a Christian chivalry. 4. “just” wars and “holy” wars Like all temporal activities that are morally legitimate, just wars may, as such, receive the approbation of the Church. However, they will not all receive it on the same grounds, or with the same insistence. In this respect we may divide wars into two great categories. I. Under the first come all just wars for which temporal princes take the responsibility: ' a. Those in which they simply defend their own legitimate temporal interests. If they are truly just, or at least have all the appearance ofjustice— for error is unfortunately always possible here—they can receive canonical approbation; they can, like every morally legitimate temporal enterprise, and without diminution of their essential temporal and secular character, be touched by a ray of spirituality. That will suffice to invest them with a kind of consecration, enough to justify, if you like, the title of Christian war, as one speaks of Christian economics or Christian politics; always on condi­ tion that the necessary reservations are made, for a war, even when just, brings terrible sins in its train. It matters little, for the rest, how this Christian consecration or colouring is proclaimed. The prince, for example, can himself protest his Christian intentions, unite his cause with that of the Church, appeal to the Christi­ anity of his subjects to persuade them to follow him. Or again, he can raise the standard of the saints, or the sign of the cross: the Bulgarians, who in their wars carried a horse’s tail for ensign, asked Pope Nicholas I by what it should be replaced. “By what indeed,” he replied, “if not by the sign of the Holy Cross?”2 Did he, on that account, accept the responsibility for these wars? Obviously not! Or again, the Pope may give his benediction, may order prayers or thanksgivings for the success of wars which he considers just or which are represented to him as such: he blessed Charlemagne’s war 1 By a fatal contradiction, the orgar i cation of the “ peace of God ” at the end of the tenth cen­ tury, because carried out not on the spiritual plane alone but on the temporal plane of the con­ secrational political order, ended in an organization of war when arms had to be taken up against those who refused to lay them down (cf. Erdmann, op. cit., p. 56). A striking instance of the law that the sword calls up the sword. 1 P.L., XC1X, 992. There was mistrust in the West of the idolatrous implications of the Slav or Germanic ensigns. 308 CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER against the Saxons,1 and sent a standard to William the Conqueror, which was raised at the battle of Hastings. Supposing that these wars were just and conformed in all essentials with the requirements of Christian doctrine, arc we to call them holy wars? No. They were in reality wars waged for the defence of secular interests, and had no immediate relation with spiritual things. b. Furthermore, in a consecrational regime, the temporal princes ought, on their own responsibility—whether they act spontaneously, or are called to their duty by the canonical power—to draw the sword in defence of their Christian subjects against those who attack them in their Christian faith or life—against those, for example, who propagate heresy or infidelity: for in a consecrational regime it is a crime under the common law like theft or murder. Such wars may be encouraged and approved by the Church more strongly than those before mentioned. Their end is the defence of spiritual values, in so far, of course, as these values have taken their place with other political values of the consecrational city.2 In this first category are those wars •which have been undertaken by bishops, whether as secular princes, charged with a regular temporal administration, or as supplying, on occasion, for defaulting secular power. 2. In the second category come three types of wars—taking it for granted always that they arc just:3 a. Those for which the Pope takes the responsibility, acting as head of the States of the Church. These are essentially political wars. But seeing that the Pontifical State is then guaranteeing the independence of the supreme apostolic power, these wars become charged with spiritual significance. They can the more easily be called Christian. Such were the wars of the Pope against the first Saracens who came up the Tiber to subjugate the Roman territory. b. Those for which the Pope takes the responsibility, acting as protector of a consecrational Christendom. They are still political wars, but directed to the defence of the political order inasmuch as it is consecrational, inas­ much as it requires visible membership of the Church from all its citizens. Hence these wars also take on a Christian and spiritual character. Such were the wars directed against the Mussulman invasion, which came to the fore in the reign of Urban II, and were called by historians such as Ranke, and later Erdmann, the “popular Crusade”. c. Between these two types of war, the one waged for the independence of ι! 1 Their full incorporation into the Frankish State was made possible only by their conversion to Christianity’, which is why, in flat defiance of the Church’s constant teaching, Charlemagne forced Baptism on them. The Slavs of the Elbe were spared this violence and brought into a pluralist political order. 1 Even in a secular regime a State can (and ought to) fight to defend liberty to preach and accept the Gospel on its own territory; for this liberty is a temporal good, even the highest temporal good. • “ Although the Pope can encourage a war, it is not enough for him to declare a war to make it just: for the person holding the Papacy may be unjust, subject to ambition, vengeance and other evil passions ” (Cajetan, In II-IIt q. 40, a. 2, no. 11). 3θ9 I< THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE the Pontifical State, the other for the independence of Christendom, there is room for a transitional type. When the armies of a prince who has been excommunicated as heretic or schismatic, march on Rome to set up an anti-pope, it is not merely the civil principale of the Pope that is endangered, but the fate of all Christendom. The Pope may recruit his military forces not only as Prince of the States of the Church, but also as protector of Christen­ dom; for under a consecrational regime it is the very basis of political order, the constitution of Christendom, that schism and heresy imperil. Consider, for example, the wars of Gregory' VII against King Henry', wars which the historians I have mentioned called the “ hierarchic Crusade ”, and which they consider to have opened the way to the ‘‘popular Crusade Thus we have three ty'pes of wars: those waged for the defence of the Pontifical State, those waged for the defence of Christendom against its internal enemies such as heretics and schismatics, and those waged for its defence against external enemies, such as Islam. These three sorts of wars stand in strong contrast with other just wars by reason of the very special relationship they bear to spiritual things. And, if we grant that the expression “holy war”—which is not to be found in St. Thomas—is capable of any acceptable meaning, it is here that it should be used. One may very well say, for example, with H. Pissard,1 that holy wars are just wars which the Church not only encourages but also rewards with her spiritual favours. But this is not to say that they are undertaken and directed by the Church, that is to say by the canonical power of the Church : they arc undertaken and directed by the extra-canonical power of the Pope acting as head of the Pontifical State or as protector of Christendom. 5. THE CHURCH, AS SUCH, DOES NOT MAKE WAR There is no room, in my opinion, for any third category of war; for wars, that is, for which the mediate or immediate responsibility would fall on the Church as such, on the canonical power bequeathed by Christ to His Apostles. So understood, the “holy war” has become a pure contradiction ever since the introduction of the law of the Gospel. It would speedily open the way for the old ideas of conversion by con­ straint, armed mission, forced Baptism—ideas that haunted the imagination 1 La guerre sainte, p. iv. cf. p. 40: “ The holy war thus appears as a new means added to interdict, release of vassals, and outlawry, for thé execution of canonical sentences against over-powerful heretics when the suzerain cannot or will not lend the help of his sword. The Church puts herself in his place, addresses herself directly to Christians without intermediary, and herself carries out the function normally devolving on the secular arm. Such is the pure crusade, the theory of which was fully realized between 1208 and 1214 (against the Albigenses) : it was a war directed by the Church, that is to say by the Pope and his immediate subordinates: it was not waged by the army of any particular king, but the Christian army: Exercitus cnccesignatorum, say the old Chronicles.” The interdict is a purely canonical punishment. Release of vassals and outlawry arc juridical punish­ ments which, in a consecrational political order, result by way of consequence from excommunica· tion for schism or heresy. As to the war against the heretics, it cannot pass for an " execution of canonical sentence ”, and the Pope cannot in any way take the responsibility for it by reason of his canonical pourer. 3IO * CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER1 of many men of action, and even theologians; but rejected by the Church as such, and not to be imputed to her without injustice. If it is clear that the Church does not countenance conversion by force, can she at least, and as the Church, as the Body of Christ, take up arms when attacked, and defend her spiritual treasures as the kingdoms of this world defend their material treasures? St. Augustine did not think so; neither the practice nor the authentic doctrines of the Church compel us to think so; and the words of Our Lord who would not have the sword drawn in defence of His Kingdom, can be received in their plain sense by Catholic theology.1 . “Suavijugo tuo dominare, Domine, in medio inimicorum tuorum”2 B. The Formation of an Ethic of the Holy War I. the new testament “Love not the world, nor the things which are in the world,” for all that is in the world is “ the concupiscence of the flesh, and the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life”; “the whole world lies in the power of evil”; but “the world passcth away and the concupiscence thereof” (i John ii. 15-17; v. 19). If concupiscence and sin lie at the roots of every war, then every war is condemned in its roots by these words, in which the last surviving Apostle recalls the essential Christian attitude to the world and to life. That is too clear to need comment. But not all these wars, as I have said, are necessarily inspired by concu­ piscence and sin. There are just wars. Are they mentioned in the Gospel? It is silent enough as a general rule on the value of temporal and cultural activities. Does it speak of the just war? Christ says enough about it to let us know that we are not to draw the sword to defend either Himself (Matt. xxvi. 52; John xviii. 11) or His Kingdom (John xviii. 36). But resort to the sword in temporal causes is not forbidden. Temporal justice, in the first place, may employ it, as St. Paul expressly says to the Romans (xiii. 4). And as for war, St. Augustine was to write that if it were always culpable no matter what the circumstances, John the Baptist would 1 At the head of Question 3 of Cause 23 of the Deaetumi Gratian seeks to establish by a series of scriptural testimonies, that the Church should not resort to arms to repel injustice: “ When the Lord was pursued by Herod, who wanted to kill Him, He did not seek the protection of arms, even though by a secret prompting He could have stirred up the Jews against the King; but He fled into Egypt and remained hidden there for seven years. Later, when the Jews would have stoned Him, He disappeared and left the Temple. Later still, when they led Him to torture, He did not seek to excite the crowd against the Elders of the Jews—this crowd that so lately had welcomed Him with palms and praise. Questioned by Pilate as to whether He was King, He answered: Λ/y Kingdom is not of this world: if it were so my sériants would certainly strict that I might not be delivered to the fcivs·, showing thereby that it is only those who pertain to die kingdoms of this world who count on help from human rather than divine power for defence against injustice. So also when He told His disciples: If they persecute you in one city, fly into anotheri He showed that we should not reply to arms by arms, but to persecutions by flight . . . 2 First Vespers of the Feast of the Sacred Heart. SU 111 Λί THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE not have been able to recommend the soldiers who consulted him about their salvation to be content with their pay (Luke iii. 14), and Jesus, having praised the faith of the Centurion (Matt. viii. 10), would not have failed to ask him to abandon the army.1 The use of the sword is thus both forbidden and authorized in the New Testament. In later centuries this was to lead to contradictor}' interpretations. There is really no contradiction: the sword is forbidden on the spiritual plane, and authorized on the temporal plane. 2. ST. AUGUSTINE AND ST. GREGORY It has been said that St. Augustine and St. Gregory’, the first speaking of heretics, the second of pagans, brought to light in the West those principles which, having been obscured for several centuries, were to be used to justify the two forms of holy war, the Crusade of Gregory VII against the heretics and that of Urban II against the Mussulmans.2 What exactly was die thought of these two Doctors? I. St. Augustine sets out to justify those wars which the Old Testament represents as undertaken at God’s command. In his Quaestiones in Hepta­ leuchum,3 speaking of the capture of Haï by Josue (Josue viii), he recalls first that those who have the right to take up arms (a right not held by all) can do so only for a just cause; then, having defined a just war, he adds: “But those wars also are just, without doubt, which are ordained by God Himself, in whom is no iniquity, and who knows every man’s merits. The leader of the army in such wars, or the people itself, are not so much the authors of the war as the instrument [non tam auctor belli quam minister].” In the De Civitate Dei1 he declares that God Himself has made exceptions to the non occides: “They did not impugn this precept who made war at God’s command [Deo auctore], or who, representing public justice and in conformity with His laws, have put criminals to death.” That is why we are able to applaud the conduct of Abraham, question Jephta’s, and excuse Samson’s. “With these excep­ tions, then, which arc justified either by a just law, or by a special intimation from God, the fountain of all justice, whoever kills either himself or another is guilty of murder.” There are just slayings at all times, and in the Old Testament there are wars having God for author. So says St. Augustine. He recalls, on the other hand, the Church’s right to resort to the secular arm, notably against heretics. 1 Contra Faustum, lib. XXII, cap. Ixxiv, We may cite Soloviev's commentary on the story of the conversion of Cornelius (Acts x) directed against Tolstoi’s theses: “ What is still more remarkable about this typical story* is ichat is not found there. Neither the angel of God, nor Peter the Apostle of the peace of Christ, nor the voice of the Holy Spirit Himself suddenly revealed in the new cate­ chumens, says to the Centurion of the Italian cohort what, according to the recent interpretation of Christianity, would have been the most important and immediately necessary thing to say: they do not tell him that, becoming Christian, he ought, before all else, to lay down his arms and terminate his military service on the spot . . {The Justification of the Good, p. 441). 3 Erdmann, op. cit., pp. &-10. 1 Lib. VI, cap x. 1 Lib. I, cap. xxi. CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER Arc wc then to conclude, as Erdmann does,1 that St. Augustine raised the repression of the Donatists by the Emperor Honorius to the rank of a holy war, of which God Himself would be the author and the soldiers His instru­ ments? But Augustine constantly protests against the capital punishment meted out to the heretics, even when they were known to be guilty of murder; he fears lest the blood of the enemies of the Church should throw a stain on the Church’s honour.2 How then can it be supposed that in the slayings of the Donatists he sees a war like those of the Old Testament with God Himself for author? In point of fact, “it was not as mandatories of the Church but in virtue of their own sovereign power that the Emperors dealt harshly with the heretics Honorius did not wait for the delegation of the African bishops to issue his edict against the Donatists in 405, nor for Augustine’s assent to proceed to the infliction of the punishment of death in 409? However, as the latter said, when the Emperor decrees the supreme penalty it remains open to the judges to soften the sentence.5 Augustine certainly affirms the Emperor’s right to act as a Christian prince, and to consider heresy as an offence against the common law;8 to that extent wc already have the consecrational order of the Middle Ages. But he wishes that “Catholicism alone should prescribe the laws that protect its security, and that it should remain judge in each case of the need to ask the tribunals to apply these laws”.7 The secular arm would then function as a pure instrument of the Church, and that is why it ought to act mildly and never go so far as to shed blood. 2. St. Gregory’s outlook on the matter is different. In connection with an expedition against the heretics who rise against the Catholic Church, corrupt the faith, and infect members of the Christian body with their venom, he urges Gennadius, Patrician and Exarch of Africa, to use force against them for the good of the Christian people, and to conduct these ecclesiastical battles valiantly like a warrior of the Lord [ecclesiastica praelia sicut bellatores Domini fortiter dimicatis] ; he suggests the rc-cstablishment of the unity of the dismembered Churches and prays the Lord to grant him the victory.8 Indubitably, there is here an appeal to the sword and to the use of the sword to defend the Christians against the turbulence of the heretics. It is already, if you like, a holy war. But Gennadius was not under the orders of Gregory. The expedition was undertaken in the name of the secular power. The Pope does not try to take the responsibility to himself. He intervenes to stir up the Exarch to defend the Church. If he speaks of “ecclesiastical” wars and “warriors of the Lord ”, wc need not take the phrases too literally. 1 op. cit., p. 7. 2 P. Batiffol, Le catholicisme de saint Augustin, pp. 344-335. 3 G. Schnurer, Kirche und Kultur im Mittelalter, 3rd ed., vol. i, p. 74. 4 P. Batiffol, op. cit., pp. 280 and 298. s >bid., p. 334. • ibid., pp. 288-289. 7 ibid., p. 282. • Epist. LXXIV; P.L. LXXVTI, col. 528. 3’3 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE What was Gregory’s attitude as regards the pagans? He writes to the same Gcnnadius to praise him for preparing himself for battle by prayer. He congratulates him on his victories which, by stopping the incursions of the Moors of Libya, and by widening the frontiers of an empire in which God is duly honoured, will enable the name of Christ to be spread abroad by the preaching of the faith.1 There is here no question of attacking the pagans just because they are pagans; but of a war that is politically justified and one of whose fortunate consequences will be to introduce and favour Christian preaching among the heathen. The immediate aim of such a war is the subjugation of pagan populations, and this, as Gregory hopes, will condition a subsequent missionary activity under the protection of the State. Erdmann agrees. But I cannot agree with him when he speaks of a “Gregorian mis­ sionary war” or when he assures us that Gregory' took the perilous step that leads to armed missionary’ aggression.2 The Kingdom of God cannot take the responsibility for defending itself in arms: that is the lesson of the New Testament. But the New Testament nowhere forbids the secular powers to defend the Kingdom of God, when unjustly attacked, by the ordinary means at their disposal; and on the hypo­ thesis of a consecrational Christendom—bound to take measures against interference with spiritual values that have become fundamental political values—such defence becomes a duty to which the canonical power may, at need, recall them. Thus, from the Gospel to St. Augustine and to St. Gregory, we may undoubtedly observe a process of doctrinal explicitation, but no break. 3. THE OSCILLATIONS OF MEDIEVAL THOUGHT Medieval thought on the relations between Christianity and war was dominated by two principles, both incontestable and yet opposed. They seem at first to be in active conflict, until the moment when one of them, gradually gaining ground, took possession, about the end of the first millen­ nium, of the whole area to which it had any right in a consecrational regime. The first of these principles is that war is always illicit for the kingdom of God, which must not resort to the sword. The second is that war can be licit for the kingdoms of this world, and is indeed inevitable in view of human perversity. Everywhere is combat, but here it is spiritual (militia spiritualis) and there carnal {militia saecularis). iWj 1 Epist. LXXV ; ibid., col. 529. 1 op. cit., p. 8. Speaking of what he calk the “ Gregorian missionary war ”, Erdmann notes that this idea suffers from an internal contradiction. Generally, it merely serves as a mask for a wholly secular war of conquest. It can degenerate sometimes into a religious war by imposing on the vanquished the alternative of Baptism or death, ” a thing never approved by the Church save exceptionally, and one that never became an established doctrine.” It is not surprising that the very idea of a missionary war met with no general acceptance at the beginning of the Middle Ages. “ The ecclesiastical doctors very often, perhaps more often than not, supported the thesis that the moral obligation to keep the peace was equally bindir g on Christians and pagans. War against the latter could not pass for just if they were not aggrasors and persecutors of Christianity ” (op. cit., p. 9). I do not see any evidence that Gregory thought otherwise. 314 CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER These two principles arc clear, and it might seem easy to confine each within its proper concrete limits. In reality, the operation is delicate, for not only do the same men belong to both kingdoms, so that war is allowed them on one count and disallowed on the other, but in a consecrational regime certain spiritual values penetrate the structure of society and there take on a political significance and character and call for secular means of defence. Hence the uncertainties and fluctuations found in the medieval writers in connection with the conduct (a) of laymen, (6) of clerics, and (c) of the Sovereign Pontiff. a. That the emperor, the king, the prince have the right in certain cir­ cumstances to declare war, is doubted by none. If the prince is Christian it is as a Christian (in a Christian manner) that he is to make war, and, more generally, it is as a Christian that he should perform all his temporal tasks; and so doing he may merit the Church’s approval. It remains true, although this was not then made precise, that he makes war not in his capacity as a Christian, as a member of the Kingdom of God, but in his capacity as prince of an earthly kingdom. Over the case of the soldier there is a certain hesitation. As a member of the Church he cannot shed blood, and yet that is what he has to do in virtue of his profession. Hence the curious custom attested by the penitentials, but disappearing as ideas became more precise, of imposing an ecclesiastical penance for killing anyone in battle, and correlatively of forbidding public penitents to bear arms and do military service.1 The shadow that still lay over the vocation of the soldier was dissipated by degrees. The weakening of the royal power and the formation of the feudal system obliged the Church, if she did not want to abandon the nobles to their own anarchy, not only to remind them of the general duties of a Christian, but also to indicate the ends for which it was permitted them, indeed commanded them, to fight. A Christian ethic of war in function of the consecrational regime began to develop. To the model of monastic sanctity and clerical sanctity, were added those of lay sanctity and knightly sanctity. But it was done with prudence. Odo of Cluny’s hero, Gerard d’/\urillac—as also the Abbot of Fleury’s, the English King, Edmund— triumphed without spilling blood.2 It is true that, for a long time past, saints who had been soldiers had been proposed for the veneration of the faithful. But these had achieved sanctity on the fringes, so to speak, of the profession of arms, by martyrdom like St. Sebastian, St. Maurice and St. George, or by renouncing the soldiership of this world to enter that of God, like St. Martin.3 We have to come down to Erlcmbald, the military leader of the Pataria of Milan, to reach the first knight in history' who was held to have achieved sanctity by the exercise of his profession. And already we come in sight of the “holy war”, for Erlcmbald had received a mandate from the Pope to meet the violence of married and simoniacal clerics with violence.4 1 Erdmann, op. cit., p. 14. * ibid., pp. 78 and 28. 3 ibid., pp. 11 and 258. 4 ibid., pp. 127-129. >;l wî • 1· THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE It was clear enough henceforth that even the vocation of arms could lead to sanctity. Even before the First Crusade the Liber de Vita Christiana of Bonizo of Sutri, which contains a code of obligations for knights, the first we possess, calls upon them to fight for the poor, for widows, for orphans, for the safety of the fatherland, and for the suppression of heretics and schismatics.1 The great movement of reform, begun at Cluny, was not confined to clerics but extended to the laity; and just as there had been, after Constantine, an attempt to Christianize the vocation of the prince, so did the institution of chivalry set out to Christianize the vocation of the soldier. b. Clerics were still forbidden to bear arms. But the bishops accepted secular responsibilities, and after that it was difficult for them to keep clear of war. They found themselves engaged in it in their character as temporal princes. When the great movement of the Peace of God was organized, which attempted to banish war finally from Christendom, * the bishops raised troops against those knights who did not want peace.3 There were those again who found themselves, for example, at Milan, at the head of the communal militia.4 Fulbert of Chartres, careful only for the sacred character of the bishops, was scandalized at such conduct which seemed to him a betrayal, since the Church should wield none but the spiritual sword. But his contemporary, Bernard of Angers, thinking of the defence of the consecrational political order, goes so far as to pronounce the panegyric of a prior who repelled a band of malefactors at the head of his monks, and who prefigured in a way the “military' orders” of St. Bernard.5 c. As to the Pope, it is clear that he cannot make war in virtue of his apostolic power whereby he is vicar of Christ and head of a Kingdom that is not of this world. What he can do here is to encourage, approve, bless, indeed reward by spiritual favours, those temporal enterprises which, being just and wholesome, more or less directly help in the long run the spiritual progress of mankind. Consequently he can approve a war that he sees as just, and ban another that seems to him iniquitous. Such papal interventions were not always without their inconveniences ; they could be prompted by incomplete and one-sided information, not to mention prejudice and passion, and raise terrible cases of conscience for Christians who found them­ selves fighting in good faith in the wrong camp. Moreover the benedictions invoked on the just cause, and the maledictions levelled against the unjust, were not always followed by immediate effect even when the Pope was a saint : the justice immanent in the world is not, to be sure, an illusory notion, but its 1 ibid., p. 235. 1 The “ Truce of God ”, which forbade war only on certain days of the week, seems to Erdmann not a preparation for the “ Peace of God ”, but a recoil and a compromise (op. cit., p. 55). •ibid., p. 56. 4 ibid., p. 59. 5 ibid., p. 69. Λ religious who, in the case of unjust aggression, does not defend himself, acts in his capacity as a Christian, as a religious. If he docs defend himself he acts as a Christian, doubtless, as a Christian should, but inasmuch os he is man, in his capacity as a man. So did those Jesuits who, on 24th June, 1621, defended Macao against the Dutch; cf. J. Duhr, S.J., Un Jésuite en Chine, Adam Schall, astronome et conseiller impériale (1592-1666), Brussels, 1936, p. 34. 316 CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER workings may disappoint the hopes of a generation; they commonly lack that point and promptitude which a faith that often seems to us a litde naive was apt to expect. The more weighty the events of history the slower seems tlicir coming to fulfilment, the more unforeseeable their consequences.1 It is clear, on the contrary, that by reason of the political power conjoined with the apostolic the medieval Popes could take, or cause to be taken, all the military measures needed for the defence of the States of the Church. That scandalizes no one; Sergius II is blamed for not having more efficiently protected Rome against the Saracens;2 John VIII is not blamed for having posted a flotilla at the mouth of the Tiber,3 nor Pius IX for having mobilized his Zouaves against Garibaldi’s bands: for in all these cases the Pope acted as prince and not as pontiff—although the older Popes were less concerned to make the distinction than those of more recent times. The true scandal occurs when certain Popes, whether in reality or appearance, allow affairs of State to gain the upper hand in their hearts. But it is especially surprising to see some Popes, whose holiness is undis­ puted, resort to force not only to assure the independence of the patrimony of St. Peter and of tributary lands, but also for the success of much wider temporal causes. They begin, doubtless, by urging the Emperor and the Christian kings to arm, but when these remain deaf to their exhortations they take into their own hands great tasks the like of which their predecessors had never before assumed : they call to their aid the princes and knights of all lands to defend a Christendom threatened in its entirety by enemies from within, like the heretics, or from without, like the Mussulmans. Clearly they are no longer acting as princes of the Pontifical State. By what right then do they assume the leadership of armies? Nobody at the time could say exactly.1 1 By reason, in part, of these delays, by reason of the difference between temporal and spiritual felicity, by reason also of the very slender relations between time and eternity, the law of justice immanent in history remains very insufficient and imperfect, especially where individual human persons are concerned—this is the great lesson of the book of Job—but also even when collective moral persons are involved. And yet the rights of holy justice will be vindicated, and every debt will be paid to the last farthing. For, as to those who are responsible for a social order, their virtues or crimes, their deeds good or evil, will follow them beyond death, to appear before the Sovereign Judge and to stand in the very eye of their conscience for ever. In short, the inadequacies, very real in our eyes, of immanent justice, are explicable by the fact that collective moral persons, which are mortal and perishable, are ultimately reached by divine justice in the immortal individual persons of those who go to make them up, and particularly of those who are their responsible rulers. The perfect triumph of holy justice will therefore never be apparent on our earth; and hence, heeding St. Peter's exhortation, we look for “ the coming of the new heavens and the new earth according to his promises in which justice dwelleth.” See J. Mari tain, “The End of Machiavell­ ianism ”, in The Range of Reason, New York, 1952, pp. 145 et seq. 1 L. Duchesne, I^s premiers temps de l'État pontificals Paris 1911, p. 204. 3 ibid., p. 267. 1 St. Peter Damian (1007-1072), who was not a man of the new epoch, did not sec how. He contented himself with saying, which was very true, that the Church knows nothing of vengeance, and that the head of the Church could not (as such) conduct a war. To those who pointed to the example of Leo IX (1049-1054) who was also a saint, and who nevertheless directed arms against the barons of Campania as simoniacs, heretics, and rebels against the Council, and who had, in a first “ Crusade launched the German knights against the Normans to “ deliver Christendom ”, he replied that “ Peter was not made prince of the Apostles for his denial, nor David a prophet because of his adultery ”. Cf. Erdmann, op. cit., pp. 107 and 131. THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE But for their part they did not hesitate. They did what they thought they ought to do for the common good. Certain great temporal interests which, in a consecrational regime, involved great spiritual interests, were threatened. They alone had the power to defend them effectively. Their duty was to act. The theory came later, and hesitantly. Manegold of Lautenbach tried to justify the undertakings of Gregory VII against the schismatics and excom­ municated Henricians by alleging texts of St. Augustine approving the use of force against the Donatists: but St. Augustine would on no account have the blood of the heretics on the hands of the Church, and what had to be justified was precisely the Pope’s resort to arms and shedding of blood. Next were brought forward the wars ordered and glorified in the Old Testament. They serve to demonstrate, no doubt, that there can be just wars, but do they suffice to prove that in the New Testament (a spiritual, not a fleshly covenant) in which spiritual realities are clearly distinguished from material, in which the worship of God is freed from Jewish nationalism and love for the Church is distinguished from love for the fatherland,1 the Kingdom of God can defend itself by arms, and that the Popes, even as Vicars of Jesus Christ, can wage war? But if not, how can one justify the conduct of these Popes? What right had they to act in the armed repression of heresy and in the organization of the movement—to all appearance aggressive—of the Crusade? The answer has been suggested already. It was not in virtue of any canonical right, but by a right annexed, extra-canonical, as protectors of a consecrational Christendom. The oscillations of medieval thought were between two extreme principles, one forbidding all war to the Kingdom of God, the other allowing it to the kingdoms of this world. The difficulty was to trace the lines of demarcation between the two zones. It is identical with the line dividing the canonical or spiritual power from the political or temporal. But it is not identical with the line dividing clerics from laymen. For the clerics could then legitimately enjoy extra-canonical powers. Prince-bishops existed ; and the Pope himself, 1 “ Certainly ”, writes Lagrange, “ die prophets presented themselves to Israel as God’s ambas­ sadors, who bore His message and were concerned wholly with his interests. Nevertheless, this mission of the prophets generally compelled them to mix in wars and alliances, in rivalries between the two kingdoms of Israel, and in political intrigue. But Jesus was concerned solely with the religious ideal: He preached it, and His preaching led Him to His death.'* At the time of Antiochus Epiphanes diere were martyrs for religious truth, martyrs commemorated by the Catholic Church. All honour to them! But wc must not forget that in this struggle they were supported by national sentiment. They were fighting for hearth as well as altar in a noble war such as was so often waged in ancient times. Their particular claim to superiority lay in the fact that they confessed one only God; but their religious laws, laws of the ancestors and of their race, were precisely similar to the national heritage of other nations which had crushed the religious belief in one God in the cities of antiquity. In Israel, however, the two forces were united . . . Then it was that the testimony of Jesus was heard. At first He loo seems to be bound up with Judaism; but. . . the Jews were under no misapprehension about His teaching. He declares the truth simply and without alloy: He has God alone in view and He relies on God alone, for His fellow Israelites reject and condemn Him. He is the first witness, but He is followed by an innumerable company of other martyrs who attest the truth of what He taught. This fact must be admitted as one of supreme importance; it divides the religious history* of humanity into two periods, before Jesus Christ and after Jesus Christ ” (TTir Gosptl of ftsus Christ, vol. ii, pp. 307 and 31B-T9). 318 CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER besides his apostolic jurisdiction, exercised a temporal authority, whether as Prince of the Pontifical State or as protector of Christendom. There is certainly nothing in the Gospel to authorize the Pope as Vicar of Christ and successor of Peter to take on himself the responsibility for a politi­ cal government and consequently for the use of the sword. But neither is there anything that forbids him to annex to his spiritual power, if the general good should imperiously demand it, an extra-canonical power of a temporal nature. Now, supposing a consecrational Christendom, these interventions of the Pope in temporal affairs can be fully justified. To preserve the in­ dependence of his apostolic power the Pope was in fact constrained to assume the political government of the city of Rome. And to safeguard the common good of a consecrational Christendom, a common good that is political in essence but presupposes the profession of the Catholic faith and visible mem­ bership of the Church, he saw himself obliged to support the crusading move­ ment. It is from this standpoint that we must judge the pre-Crusade of Gregory VII against the schismatic and excommunicated Emperor, and the great popular Crusade of Urban II against the Mussulmans. G. The Crusades I. THE HISTORICAL FACTS i. From the standpoint of the secular historian the Crusades appear as a phase in that gigantic struggle between East and West, which oscillates more and more dangerously as history advances. It began with the Median wars, and is far from ended yet. It was marked by the conquests of Alexander, by the invasion of the Huns, by the successive victories of the Persian Sassanids and of the Eastern Roman Empire, by the overwhelming triumph of Islam which in the middle of the seventh century was “the great revenge of Asia”, the “ground swell” that submerged North Africa and passed the Pyrenees; by the Byzantine re-conquest which at the end of the tenth century threw back the Arabs for a brief space beyond Armenia and the Middle Euphrates, by the thrust of the Turkish invasion which in the last quarter of the eleventh century wholly engulfed Syria and most of Anatolia. “At this date the integrity of Europe could be saved only by an outburst of conscious energy, in point of fact only by the entry on the scene of the youthful forces represent­ ing the renewed West since the great Roman renaissance of the eleventh century, and it is this effort that is properly called the Crusades.”1 Whereas the West had become Christian, the East had passed to a considerable extent under the hegemony of the Crescent, so that the Christian faith, which in this conflict of peoples and cultures was represented only on one side, seemed to have its destinies bound up with that of the Western world. Above the great duel which, in the first half of the seventh century, took place between the i 1 René Grousset, Histoire des croisades el du royaume franc de Jérusalem, Paris, 1931-1936, vol. Ill, •·· p. in. 3’9 I i THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE Persian king Khosrocs Parviz and the Emperor Hcraclius, and in which he saw the first Crusade, die chronicler William of Tyre held up the true cross, "symbol and prize of die struggle”;1 and the great basilcis who, in the tenth century, led against Islam what may be called strictly "the first of the Cru­ sades in date”,2 the Greek Crusade, aimed not merely at restoring the old Roman frontiers but also at “liberating the Holy Sepulchre” and "restor­ ing Jerusalem to the faith of Christ”.3 They were repelled by the Turks, and it was the Ladn West that took up the task of defending the Cross against the Crescent. 2. Whence came the moral impetus, the dynamism of the Crusades? They were closely integrated in a larger historical fact—the awakening of Europe, the first European renaissance after the fall of the Roman Empire— and they were one of the manifestations of a spiritual power of expansion, becoming eventually warlike, demographic, artistic, whose other effects in the eleventh century were the Cluniae movement, the flowering of Romanes­ que art, the development of pilgrimages, the constitution of the Pontifical monarchy and the warlike expeditions against the Arabs in Spain. For the Crusade “if by that we understand die defence of Latinity against Islam, in no wise began, as the textbooks teach, in the Levant and in 1097, but well back in the first half of the eleventh century and in the extreme West—in Spain—where Gregory VII in particular warmly encouraged the enrolment of French barons under the standard of the Reconquista. Gregory’s gesture against the Mussulmans of Spain is the prelude to that of Urban II against the Mussulmans of Syria”.4 This last fact is not without its significance: the Crusade, up to a certain point, appeared as the reply of medieval Christen­ dom to the principle of the holy war proclaimed by Mahomet himself against the pagan tribes of Arabia,5 which was now imperilling the very existence of Christianity. “The Eastern Crusade was thus bound up with the Spanish reconquest. Even the Italian shipping, long before it helped the 1 Grousset, op. cit., vol. I, p. 1. ’ibid., vol. Ill, p. ii. ’ G. Schlumberger, cited by Grousset, op. cit., vol. I, p. xi. * Grousset, op. cit., vol. Ill, p. viiL There is more to be said. In a letter addressed in 1074 “ to all those who would defend the Christian faith”, Gregory VII proclaims that “ the race of pagans has risen against the Christian Empire [of the East], it has come to the walls of Con­ stantinople devastating all, filling all with violence and tyranny, killing thousands of Christians like so many cattle he declares that he is leasing no stone unturned “ to come as quickly as possible to the aid of the Christian Empire ”, and he urges all Christians to be ready to follow the example of Christ and give their lives for their brothers (Epist. XUX-, P.L. CXLVIII, col. 329). The Crusade is here conceived as a defensive war. 1 “ Henceforth the Mussulmans were authorised to reply to violence by violence, but only when so ordered from on high” (Emile Dermenghem, La tie de Mahomet, Paris 1929, p. 159). The Prophet cites as an example to his faithful “ the Greeks under Heraclius who had beaten the Per­ sians and thus saved the Churches of Syria and, in consequence, the Mussulmans of the Hedjaz ” (ibid., p. 191). He promises paradise to those who fall; to die in the holy war is to suffer martyr­ dom. St. Thomas was to say, on the contrary, that the Church does not venerate as martyrs those who die with sword in hand (11-11, q. 124, a. 5, obj. 3) ; and Francis of Vittoria, commenting on this article, declares that however heroic may be the death of those who perish in the war against the Saracens to defend the Christian faith,·, he Church does not regard them as martyrs [çuia ibi est cimtrapuçnantia] (Commentarios a la Secunda secundae de Santo Tomos, Salamanca 1935, p. 350). 32O CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER Crusaders to capture the maritime towns of Syria and Palestine, had par­ ticipated in the struggle against Islam by helping the Spanish to reconquer the Balcarics. The Dieu le veut! of 1095 was only in appearance a new formula. For more than a century God had willed it, the Papacy had proclaimed it, and the barons of the Midi and of Northern France had fulfilled this will on the marches of Castile and Aragon.”1 Whereas Alexander and Saladin embody in a way “the stream of history, the ineluctable chain of causes and effects”, the first symbolising the revenge of Hellenism on the barbarian world, the second personifying the irresistible counter-attack, Pope Urban II, proclaiming to the Council of Clermont on the 27th November 1095, “that in view of the Turkish conquest and the Byzantine collapse, the West must be defended not only on the marches of Spain, but also on the shores of Asia”, appeared as coming “to halt and turn back the course of events”. The Crusade which he had long been planning and whose inception was due “neither to the appeal of Alexis Comnenus, nor to the pilgrimage and preaching of Peter the Hermit”, was “the saving reaction, the defensive rebound of Europe in the face of the greatest danger it had ever been in since the fall of the Roman Empire. The moral unity of the Roman world was now suddenly re-knit from the Atlantic to the Danube and indeed to the Bosphorus, to postpone for three and a half centuries the fatal collapse of 1453”.2 Such were the main lines of the picture on the eve of the First Crusade. 3. The initiative in the matter of the Crusade thus came from the Pope. By choosing for its leader the Bishop of Puy, Adhemar of Monteil, the Pope showed that “he wanted to keep the direction of the movement in his own hands, the territories to be conquered by the Crusaders undoubtedly being, in his mind, another patrimony of the Holy See”.3 In fact, after the conquest of Jerusalem, we sec the Archbishop of Pisa, Daimbert, become Patriarch of the Holy City, claim possession. “The Holy Land belonged to Christ the King whose representative the Patriarch was. Thus the Patriarch was the sole legal possessor of the land, and it was only as his mandatories and vassals that the Defender of the Sepulchre and the Prince of Antioch could exercise authority.”1 The Latin society of the Levant thus presented itself “as a replica of the Latin society of the West. At the centre, a pontifical see— Jerusalem instead of Rome—commanding vassal kings. But what was pos­ sible in the midst of the Christian world was hardly possible here in this entrenched borderland on the threshold of the desert, at the mercy of the first Arab or Turkish raid”.5 Daimbert’s Patriarchate was of short duration. At the death of Godfrey de Bouillon the Holy City passed into the hands of Baldwin I, founder of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which did not differ from other temporal kingdoms. 1 Grousset, op. cit., vol. Ill, p. ix. 2 ibid., vol. Ill, p. xxv; vol. I, p. 2; vol. Ill, p. ix. 3 Grousset, op. cit., vol. I, p. 4. 4 ibid., p. 195. 3 ibid., p. iq8. THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE 2. VARIOUS MEANINGS OF THE WORD “CRUSADE” The above recital shows that what is commonly called the history of the Crusades covers several different types of fact that need to be carefully dis­ tinguished : a. First come the pilgrimages. The Crusade, then understood in its most spiritual sense, “is, by definition, a work of piety, the fulfilment of a vow, the laying up of merits, so much so that many who took the Cross merely went to the Holy Land and, like Count Robert of Flanders in 1177, let it be known that they came to pray and in no wise to make war”.1 b. But the time came when these pilgrimages led to fighting. “The essential thing then was to fight, and not to come back without having killed Saracens, even if that involved breaking truce, upsetting all the patient policy of the Franco-Syrian colonists, and finally leaving these latter to struggle on in the midst of inextricable difficulties.”2 These expeditions deserve to be called raids and brigand expeditions rather than Crusades. c. The name “Crusade” attaches, on the other hand, to military'expedi­ tions conducted according to the law of nations, undertaken in response to papal appeals and aiming at the liberation of the Holy Land and the pro­ tection of Christendom against the Mussulman invasions. d. Lastly, to the spirit of the Crusade defined as an outburst of enthusiasm, of adventure, of transient pilgrimage, we may oppose, as Grousset con­ stantly docs, the spirit of permanent occupation, of colonisation, of political action, which presided at the formation and maintenance of the Frankish monarchy in the East. The only one of these elements which raises a problem that concerns us here is the third, relating to those organized expeditions of the Christian West, at once spiritual and warlike, begun in Spain at the behest of the Popes and carried by them to the threshold of Asia.3 By what title did the Pope intervene? Was it as the head of Christianity or as protector of Chris1 ibid., vol. III, p. 2. Mme N. Denis-Boulet notes that in St. Catherine of Siena’s day the official name for the Crusade is passagium. The word is already used in this sense by Innocent III, but it is *4 undoubtedly still older: it indicates that in the mind of the Church the Crusade was a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, or a means to this pilgrimage, rather than a war on the infidels 0 {La carrure politique de sainte Catherine de Sienne, Paris 1939, p. 77). 3 ibid. 3 It is of course clear that we arc not obliged to justify the acts of barbarism which took place on these expeditions. At Nicaea, for example, the Crusaders had the idea of demoralizing the be­ sieged by catapulting in among them the heads of the Turkish soldiers who had been sent to relieve them; and there are many other gruesome happenings of that kind. Speaking of the massacre which followed the capture of Jerusalem, for example, René Grousset says that whatever the provocation and the crimes on the part of the enemy, the thing is a blot on the history of the Crusade, and he quotes the judgment of rVchbishop William of Tyre, the famous chronicler of the Kingdom of Jerusalem: “ The town presented the spectacle of so great a slaughter of the enemy and so great a shedding of blood that the victors themselves could not but be overcome with horror and disgust ” {Histoire des croisades, vol. I, p. 161). It is of course true that barbarism was no preserve of the Crusaders; they themselves were also capable of great nobility and die figure of St. Louis dying like his Master amid all the manifestations of defeat, wall remain the eternal glory of the Crusades. It is also true that in the time of Saladin particularly they encountered many fine acts of chivalry on the part of their enemies. 322 3 CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER tcndom? Were the Crusades the warlike expeditions of Christianity or of Christendom? D. St. Bernard’s Distinction of the Two Swords The capture of Edessa by the Turks on the 23rd December 1144 and again on the 3rd November 1146, followed by the massacre and deportation of the Armenian population, marked the beginning of the return wave of Mussulman conquest. It was thus that it was understood in the West, where the news of the event provoked the Second Crusade. Pope Eugenius III gave the task of preaching it to St. Bernard. After reading to the immense assembly at Vézelay (31st March 1146) the Bull exhorting the Christians to “take up the cross and your arms” to stop the advance of the infidels, to defend the Eastern Church liberated by the first Crusaders, to rescue those thousands of Christian prisoners whom the Mussulmans held in chains, the saint succeeded, by the fire of his eloquence, in raising a wave of enthusiasm not unlike that of 1095. The Second Crusade was fixed for the following year. It has been remarked that instead of being a more or less inorganic inter­ national migration, it set on foot two regular national armies commanded by the two most powerful sovereigns of the West—the King of France, Louis VII, and the Emperor of Germany, Conrad III—and that it was thus dis­ tinguished from the First Crusade “in theory at least, since the religious origin of the Crusade had obliged the knights to drag after them in their wake a whole crowd of pilgrims and penitents, devoid of all military value and impeding the movement of the troops”.1 How did St. Bernard explain the alliance of the cross and the sword? He had recourse to the image, since become famous, of the two swords. In the book he dedicated to the Templars the saint in a general way justi­ fied the use of arms by the fact that John the Baptist did not ask the soldiers to lay down their arms, but simply to be contented with their pay (Luke iii. 14).2 He gave St. Paul’s words reminding the Romans that the civil power bears the sword as God’s minister (xiii. 4); he quoted the wars of the Old Testament; and, as a climax, recalled the example of the Chief of all knights who one day armed Himself, if not with the sword at least with the lash, to chase the traders from the Temple. After all this, he went on to approve of the drawing of both the swords of the faithful to repel the heathen who make war, oppress the Christian people, and dream of depriving Jerusalem of all its inestimable riches, of profaning the Holy Places, and of possessing themselves for ever of the sanctuary of God.3 1 Grousset, op. cit., vol. IT, p. 226. 1 The argument is taken from St. Augustine: “ For if the Christian religion*’, he writes, in a letter to Marcellinus, “ condemned wars of every kind, the command given in the Gospel to sol­ diers asking counsel as to salvation would rather be to cast away their arms, and withdraw them­ selves wholly from military service; whereas the word spoken to such was: ‘ Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely, and be content with your wages ’—the command to be content with their wages manifestly implying no prohibition to continue in the service ” (Epist. CXXXV1I1, 15). ’ De Laude Novae Militiae, ad Milites Templi, caps, iv and v; P.L. CLXXXII, cols. 924 and 927. __________ ' 323 i : .L THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE After the loss of Edessa St. Bernard urged the Pope to draw the material sword himself and go to the aid of the Eastern Church: “Since the Saviour suffers anew where once He died for us, both the swords must be drawn which he allowed on the first occasion [Luke xxii. 38J. And who should draw them but you? Both swords of Peter must be unsheathed as often as need be, the one at his command, the other by his hand. And, indeed, of the one of which it seemed that he ought not to make use it was said: Pul up thy sword into its sheath. Therefore that too was his, but not to be drawn by his own hand. I think that now is the time when necessity bids both to be drawn for the defence of the Eastern Church.”1 There arc therefore two swords quite distinct from each other, one of which Peter takes immediately into his own hand, and one that is taken immediately by the prince. But Peter can, and in certain very' grave circumstances ought to, command the prince to draw his sword. Finally, at the end of his life, St. Bernard makes the same distinction in his De Consideratione. But the circumstances have changed. It is no longer a question of encouraging the Pope to the Crusade against the heathen, but of recommending him to be gentle to his own flock. He is to gain them not by steel but by words. And though the material sword is rightly his, to use it unwisely would be in a way to usurp it: “Why do you seek to usurp the sword that once already you have been ordered to put back into its scabbard? But he who denies that it is yours does not sufficiently consider the words of the Saviour: ‘Put back thy sword into its sheath’ [John xviii. it]. It is therefore yours, and to be drawn, no doubt, at your bidding, but not by your hand. For otherwise, if it concerned you in no way, to the Apostles who said: ‘Here are two swords’, the Saviour would not have replied: ‘It is enough’, but: ‘It is too much.’ Both swords therefore belong to the Church, the spiritual and the material. The material sword is to be drawn in defence of the Church, the spiritual by the Church; the spiritual by the hand of the priest, the material by the soldier, but at a sign from the priest, and on the order of the Emperor.”1 The Church, says St. Bernard, possesses the material sword because she can command princes to draw it. But when the material sword spills blood, whose is the responsibility? Does it fall on the Church, or on the prince? The problem arising from the bloody repression of heresy arises again in connection with the Crusade. E. Theology of the Crusade I have no intention here of setting out all the various theological explana­ tions that have been proposed for the Crusade. Erdmann has noted that, contrary to what happened in the quarrel over investitures, it was practice rather than theory that took the precedence in the matter of the holy war.3 * Epùt. CCLVI, i and 2; P.L. CLXXXII, col. 4G4. 1 Lib. IV, cap III, 7; P.L. ibid., col. 776. 1 Dit EnLiUhung dts Krtuzzugjgtdanktns, p. 133. 324 CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER The Popes, prompted as I believe by the Holy Spirit, had a lively sense of the new responsibility that lay on them at this historical moment. They acted accordingly. The theoretical justification came afterwards. It took forms that may seem to us too vague, or insufficient, or disputable; even erroneous. We need neither the Donation of Constantine nor the False Decretals to justify the States of the Church and the authority of the great Pontiffs of the Middle Ages. Nor have we any need, in order to justify the Inquisition (as far as it can be justified), to credit the canonical power that Christ left with His Church with a right to inflict the punishment of death. Similarly, we arc not obliged to justify the wars against the heretics, nor yet the Crusades, on the grounds alleged by contemporary writers: to force St. Augustine’s texts, for example, on the suppression of the Donatists, so as to make them cover the death penalty, or to dbmpare Pope Urban II, preaching the First Crusade, with Moses leading the Hebrews to the Promised Land. Behind all these theoretical explanations, disputable or plainly incorrect, we may perhaps recognize a practical attitude in the Sovereign Pontiffs which can be shown as justified in the light of the later development of Christian doctrine. For I think that the precisions furnished, for example, by Leo XIII on the relations of Church and State will enable the theologian to appreciate more exactly how certain facts of the past, such as the Inquisi­ tion, the wars against heresy and the Crusades, stand with regard to the powers and the life of the Church. Doubtless this standpoint is not that of the historian, but that of the speculative theologian. But the historian himself should, I think, recognize its legitimacy. Let us see then how, from this standpoint, we should understand the distinction of the two swords as formulated by St. Bernard on the occasion of the Second Crusade. In accordance with what has been said there are, in the abstract, three possible interpretations. It could be said first that those who dispose of military forces are acting as pure instruments of the canonical power, that is of the Church. The Church is the principal agent, and on her finally lies the responsibility for the blood spilt. On this interpretation the Crusades would be Church affairs; they would pertain directly to the Kingdom of God. Such a view might be in conformity with the doctrine of Suarez: it is not in conformity with that of St. Augustine, nor, I think, with that of St. Thomas. Its defect is to make the analogous too much like the univocal, to fail to make a clear enough distinction between the ways of God’s Kingdom and those of Caesar’s, between the characteristic means of the former, which, even when intrinsically and immediately material, should always, by reason of the immediate ends they envisage, submit to the attraction of the spiritual and be purified, moderated and softened; and the means of the latter, which, serving purely temporal ends, can remain severe and even bloody. War of course can be waged for temporal ends that are very noble, and sometimes closely connected with the maintenance or progress of the faith 325 ? : THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE in a given region. The well-recognized piety of certain military leaders, such as St. Louis on the Christian side,1 led them to seek the spiritual before all else, to efface themselves before it, to reduce themselves, and their armed forces too if that were possible, to the condition of a pure instrument. * And yet I think one may claim that an armed force refuses of its very nature to be handled as a pure instrument of the spiritual.3 1 On the Mussulman side there wtls Nur al-Din: “ Unlike Zengi, he aimed less at personal terri­ torial gains than at the expulsion of the infidels, and the gains were added according to the scrip­ tural promise. The annexation of Damascus in x 154 united all Mussulman Syria under his rule. A hard administrator at times, but free from the outbursts of the old Turkish cruelty of liis father Zengi, his government was remarkably wise and beneficent. For these qualities he gained the esteem of the Franks, just as Louis IX did of the Mussulmans: the .Archbishop, William ofTyre, bowed before ‘this prince so just and religious according to his Law'. Observe that like the holy Imam ’AH he had the defects of his qualities. If he protected the doctors of the law, the learned and the wise, his religious exaltation plunged him at times into strange mystical paroxysms. Of a nervous and morbid temperament, often at the point of death, he was far from possessing the physical personality of his father. In this state of mind he so wholly subordinated his political interests to his religious impulses, that those who knew how to provide for their own personal ambitions under pretext of the holy war would often deceive him (as happened also with the young Saladin) ” (Grousset, op. cit., vol. Ill, p. xxiii). 1 They were in fact striving toward an unattainable ideal ; in actuality they did practise their profession as politicians and soldiers. René Grousset, distinguishing the “ purely French character ” of the Seventh Crusade from that of the preceding ones, which were “ international expeditions organized, in principle, by Christendom as a whole ”, goes on to write: “ Louis IX’s Crusade— despite the profoundly religious character stamped upon it by the sanctity of its leader—presents itself to us, on the contrary, as the first colonial expedition of the Kingdom of France. When she embarked at Aigues-Mortes on 25 August 1248, it was really the Capetian State, which Philip Augustus had led to triumph at Bouvines, that bad begun the attempt to relieve the desperate straits of the Frankish colonies on the marches of Syria. ... It should be noticed how positive in temper and well-organized was this expedition of Louis IX’s, which has been represented to us as a purely mystical undertaking. The king-saint’s Crusade was a technician’s campaign above all things; he waited for months at Cyprus and at Damietta $0 that every thing should be just so . . (Histoire des croisades, vol. Ill, pp. 428 and 456). It is however clear that the crusading spirit and an over-ardent desire to ” die for God in the Holy Land ” were sometimes the cause of great impru­ dence in the military sphere, as were other passions which were not, unfortunately, on so lofty a plane. One wonders whether the King could have agreed finally to that diversion of the eighth Crusade against Tunis which was “ an enormous historic blunder ” and of w’hich “ St. Louis was, alas, no more than the victim ” (ibid., p. 653), because it had become a matter of indifference to him where he died, provided it were in battle against the infidel. ’ The Military Orders represent a supreme attempt of Christianity to subject war to some dis­ cipline. Did they’ set out to make it a pure instrument of the Kingdom of God? We know the origin of the first of these Orders, that of the Templars, which served as a model for the others. Some knights, struck by the desolation and insecurity which, in spite of the success of the First Crusade, prevailed in the Holy Land, undertook on their own initiative to police the routes and the watering-places and to protect pilgrims against the Saracens and the bandits who infested the new kingdom of Jerusalem. Baldwin I accepted their services and lodged them in the precincts of the Temple. They* took a vow to fight God's enemies in obedience, chastity and poverty. After nine years they still had only nine members. But they were approved at the Council of Troyes in 1128 and St. Bernard agreed to justify these soldier-monks and to pronounce “ the panegyric of the new militia ”. cf. Vacandard, Pu de saint Bernard. vol. I, pp. 235-255. What was the meaning of the Church’s approbation? Was it a recognition of war as an instru­ ment of the Kingdom of God? Not in the least. Neither in this matter nor in the Crusade did the Church propose to take the responsibility for the war fought and the blood spilt. That, as she knew well, was not a spiritual task but a secular one. She approved those laymen who, having bound themselves to God by die three vows in order to purify their intention, made a speciality of rendering to Caesar what belonged to Caesar in the matter of fighting, under the responsibility of their temporal chiefs, for the common good of Christendom. He who, be he layman or even cleric, takes 326 CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER Wc now come to the second explanation. Those who dispose of the military force are acting as secondary principal causes. The Church inter­ venes only to remind them of their task, of their duty to act according to purely temporal laws of action which are other than her own. The Crusades are directly temporal affairs; they pertain directly to the kingdoms of this world. What they aim at immediately is the temporal safety of the Christian West. But the defence by arms of the Christian West, of the social order then called Christendom,1 though forbidden to the Church as such—to the canonical power—could nevertheless become the subject of a precept up arms in legitimate defence or to succour a child under attack, acts according to the (just) law’s of die temporal order and not according to the laws of the spiritual order; he acts like a Christian on the plane of diose things that pertain direcdy to Caesar, not in his capacity as a Christian on the plane of diose things that pertain direcdy to God. This, I diink, is how the legitimate mission of the Military Orders should be understood. If in fact there have ever been any Christians who hoped to transform a military force into an instrument of the spiritual and to wage a holy war, it was certainly these soldier-monks. Such a hope however went against the nature of things, and there we have the chief cause of the abuses which the Military' Orders occasioned. The Military’ Orders opened the way to the constitution ofmonastic States, at least of a certain type of monastic State, since other types arc known to us such as those of Thibet, of Mount Athos, or the Reductions of Paraguay. I n his study “ The Monastic States on the Coasts of die Baltic ”, appearing in Baltic and Scandinavian Countries, Gdymia 1937, vol. Ill, no. 1, Karol Gorski assures us that “ the fact that the monastic States had something of the character of a caste was not the sole cause of decadence, and was not necessarily an element of weakness: on the contrary, these litdc States were relatively more powerful than others with similar material condi dons, for their cohesion was stronger”. He points to die sometimes important contributions they made to the general advance­ ment of culture. But he notes “ die ideal of the monastic life was certainly not maintained in die monastic States. The moral corruption in Thibet or Mount Athos, the low level of morality in die Chivalric Orders in the last years of dieir existence, and even the excessive development of trade with die Jesuits of Paraguay, prove this up to the hilt. It was the inevitable result of a devia­ tion from the religious ideal and its transference into the sphere of the temporal. That perhaps is die reason why the decadence and disappearance of these States or pscudo-States was passed over with so little regret”. The wish to wield temporal means of this sort as pure instruments of the spiritual can only issue in coercion and the ruin of the spiritual: “ For us who bring men the faidi or death . . .” (Mickiewicz, Conrad Wallenrod, 4th Song). On die origins of the Teutonic Slate, Gorski writes: “ The State of the Teutonic Order did not issue from the fundamental ideas of the Middle Ages; it was rather an abuse of them . . . The Papacy’ did not desire the foundation of a monastic State on the lands conquered in Prussia . .. These ideas of the Holy See were in harmony with the principles of the monastic life, which asked the monks for renunciation and was wholly opposed to the temptations of a secular dominion ... If we go back to the first beginnings of the Teutonic State in Prussia we shall find around its cradle the laicising and scoffing spirit of die im­ perial court of Frederick, King of Sicily. Was it perhaps these lay and Mussulman influences that vitiated the ideal of Hermann von Salza? ” (The Decay of the Teutonic Order and State in Prussia, Warsaw 1933, p. 1). fhe monastic States, issue of the Military Orders, must be clearly distinguished from the old States of the Church. The former were at the immediate service of a temporal order, that of Chris­ tendom, and acted, at their best, as its ramparts along the whole pagan frontier. The latter imme­ diately served a spiritual order, that of Christianity, their end being to assure the free exercise of the pontifical power. 1 ” In quo quantum Ecclesiae Dei, et totae christianitati periculum immineat, et nos cognoscimus, et prudentiam vestram latere non credimus” (Bull of Eugeni us III, 1st December 1145). ’* Quis de tot fidei orthodoxae cultoribus tam immaniter trucidatis, de tot calamitatibus captivorum, et aliis christianitatis opprobriis non ex tota mente movebitur? ” (Bull of Nicholas IV, 1st August 1291). See in Jean Rupp, L'idée de chrétienté dans la pensée pontificale, des origines à Innocent III, Paris 1939, where there is pointed out die difference of meaning between the Church=” spiritual society of the Christians ”, and Christendom (christianitas) =” society of Christians in pursuit of a temporal end ” (p. 127). 327 W ; THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE Μ p' I 1 I J H· ! addressed by the Church to the Christian princes, and of spiritual favours granted to all who would undertake it—since it appeared not only as a legitimate work, but also as a condition of the preservation of the faith in so many souls. The Church used her canonical power to preach the Crusade, but she did not directly assume the responsibility for the Crusade under­ stood as a warlike expedition. Theologically, this thesis is beyond reproach. Let us suppose a Christendom of the secular type, a civilization sufficiently penetrated by the influence of the Church to deserve to be called a Christian civilization. Suppose that one day it has to defend itself in arms against a civilization of the naturalist or atheist type, and that the Sovereign Pontiff intervqnes morally in the conflict to support one camp and to forbid Christians to fight in the other. Then it is to the above explanation that we should turn. But the Crusades were more than that. They occurred in a different atmosphere and cannot, I think, be fully accounted for in this way. If the attitude of the medieval Popes is to be thoroughly justified we must take into account a further consideration. Hence a third explanation. Owing to the failure of the imperial power the Pope was compelled to accept the responsibility for the Crusade, not as Vicar of Christ and Head of Christianity', but as protector of a consecrational Christendom, being bound to act on account of the spiritual values then involved in the political order, values which therefore could and should be defended by political resources. Thus it was in virtue of a temporal extracanonical power that the Pope then intervened, exercising authority over the princes considered as pure instruments for the common good of Christen­ dom. To be responsible for a just war, for just bloodshed, was no sin for a temporal power; it was ethically good and so could be made meritorious by charity; but it would have been a sin for the Church, who has to conquer by being ready to shed her own blood, like Christ, not by spilling that of others. What is allowable for the kingdoms of this world, whose ends and means are temporal, would be certainly illicit for the Kingdom of God, whose end and means are spiritual. The Crusade might very suitably be a war waged by Christendom against Islam. It could not be a war of Christianity against Islam, since Christianity' does not go to war. If then a “holy war” is a war for which the Church takes the responsibility there has never yet been a holy war. The phrase “holy war” can only startle anyone who contemplates the mystery' of the cross, the mystery that lies at the heart of Christianity, is presented every day at Mass and is the cause wherefore, as St. Thomas says, the Church forbids all clerics to take blood on their hands.1 It remains foreign to the Christian vocabulary'. In point of fact St. Thomas never makes use of it; and when he wants to characterize a war undertaken at the instance of the Church, he is content to call it “just”.2 1 “ Non competit cis occidere vel effundere sanguinem, sed magis esse paratos ad propriam sanguinis effusionem pro Christo, ut imitentur opera quod gerunt ministerio ” (II—II, q. 40, a. 2, “ Utrum clericis et episcopis sit licitum pugnare? ”) 1 “ Ad clericos pertinet disponere et inducere alios ad bellandum bella justa. Non enim inter­ dicitur eis bellare quia peccatum sit, sed quia tale exercitium eorum personae non congruit/’ 328 CANONICAL POWER AND POLITICAL POWER The duty of the Crusaders—symbolized by the liberation of the Holy Land, the earthly country of the God of Heaven,1 now, it was hoped, to become the marches of Christendom upon the frontiers of Asia—was really nothing less than the defence of the temporal order of the West, of the whole of Christendom, whose collapse would be so damaging to the Kingdom of God. Even while perilously hemmed in by Islam, it had been foolishly occupied in shedding its own blood in battles and tourneys, but was now at last recalled to a sense of its own living solidarity by the extraordinary moral prestige of the Papacy. The fact that at this moment of the millennial struggle between Asia and Europe, between East and West, the Church was ranged wholly on one side gave the West a privileged character and an importance not unlike that of the ancient Jewish people whom no one could attack without seeming to attack the cause of the true God. That, it is true, is but a superficial resemblance; for whereas the Old Testament revelation was, by the divine law, reserved to the Jewish people,2 that of the New is divinely addressed to all peoples, the cross being destined to extend its arms over East and λ Vest alike. It is true however that in respect of the material conditions of its existence the Kingdom of God then stood in close depen­ dence on the social organization of the West. The connection between the spiritual and the temporal was then the more evident since many bishops were also temporal princes, and since, if they did not fight themselves, they accompanied their people on the field of battle. Facts like these might easily produce the illusion that the Church as such was in the midst of the mêlée. But this was not so. The Church does not shed blood. The military Crusade was the direct work of the temporal powers of Christendom, and of the Pope as protector of Christendom.3 (ibid., ad 3). This is also surely the deepest thought of St. Bernard. At the end of a letter inviting the clergy and people of Eastern France to go to the aid of the Eastern Church, he recalls that the Jews should not be massacred, and that if it became necessary to take up arms against them, this would be the business of the temporal power. “ Even if they were pagans we should have to look for their conversion, we should have to bear with them rather than attack them with the sword. But if they begin to use violence against us it is for those who do not bear the sword in coin to repel force by force” (Epist. CCCLXIII, 7; P.L. GLXXXII, col. 567). 1 St. Bernard, Epist. CCCLXIII, 1. * However, even in the times of the Old Law the Church, in right and in fact, was universal and supranational. But at a certain local point it was linked, accidentally and provisionally, with a particular people within which its development was favoured. For it was in the lands of this people that she was to bring into the world the man-child who should withstand the dragon, thanks to whom she would emerge at last from her preparatory phase and enter her definitive phase. Such is the covenant between the Church and the Jewish people: it was made in the first place for the sake of the Church, not that of the Jewish people, who had but the part of a servant to play. However strict had been the solidarity of the spiritual and the temporal in the Old Testament, their distinction remained intact, and their destinies were not confused. The existence of the Kingdom of God was never interrupted; but when the kings were faithless to their mission they were overthrown, and when Israel itself failed to recognize its Messiah it was rejected and its temporal dreams were shattered. ’ The compénétration of die spiritual and the temporal which, characterizes the Crusades—and, in general, the whole medieval political order—and which I am attempting to analyse from a theological standpoint, is well marked by Groussct, who sees things from the exterior and descrip­ tive standpoint of the historian: “ On the 27th November 1095, the tenth day of the Council of 329 i ? THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INC/\RNATE Thus the Kingdom of God never takes up arms and never assumes the responsibility for blood. Mahomet, in whom Islam found its highest and purest embodiment, having borne patiently with injuries for thirteen years, proclaimed the principle of the holy war, promised paradise to his swords­ men, took part in thirty campaigns and directed ten battles. But Jesus, in whom the Kingdom of God found its highest and purest embodiment, not only directed no battles but offered Himself, on the contrary’, to death without even allowing Himself to be defended by the sword ; not to condemn the use of the sword by the temporal authorities, as St. Paul clearly saw, but to manifest to all eyes that his Kingdom was not of this world : “ If my kingdom were of this world, my sen-ants would certainly fight that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now- my kingdom is not from hence” (John xviii. 36)? Clermont, Urban II called all Christendom to arras. It was the call of the Pontiff to die defence cf the faith threatened by the new Mussulman invasion, the call of the true heir of die Roman Emperors to the defence of the West, the call of the highest European authority for the protection of Europe against the conquering Asiatics, successors of Attila and precursors of Mahomet II ” (L'fyopte da croisades, Paris 1939, P· Q· 1 It may be permitted to conclude by appropriating the words of Lacordaire, written on the 23rd May 184b to Mme Swetchine: “ Ever)’ sane mind can understand the Middle Ages if presented as an epoch of transition, proportioned to the traditions, the morals and the needs of the peoples, an age from which came many beautiful things which sufficiently justify the means used to obtain them. But to present the medieval order as an absolute, as the sole genuine issue of the Gospel of Jesus Christ; to worship its thought, to raise it to the dignity of a sovereign archetype, is unduly to slight the century’ in which we live, and to run the risk of being flatly contradicted by the final court of appeal, posterity. We do not know where we arc going; God's secret is still unrevealed: but wc must know how to wait patiently in the chaos for the fiat lux of creation, and not to impede, by rash regrets or over-ardent expectations, the unknown work which lies hidden between the hands of God. The word has not yet been given from on high: wc must await it without cursing cither the past or the present, accepting both as the intertwined roots of a future that is to surpass them.” The feeling of uncomfortableness experienced by a Catholic watching Fritz Hochw alder’s recent play Sur la krre comme au ciel (and a pan of its dramatic effect, no doubt) derives from the fact that there is no drawing of the distinction betw een the task which the Jesuits carried out as missionaries, in which capacity they implanted the Church—the crucified, pilgrim Kingdom of God—among the Indians, and the task they carried out as “ supplying ” in the temporal order—the organization of the Reductions of Paraguay, which were tied up with the perishable kingdoms of this world. See “Les Reductions de Paraguay”, Nova et Vetera, 1954, p. 85. Chapter VII SECOND AND THIRD DIVISIONS OF THE PERMANENT JURISDICTION We may now pass on to the other great divisions of the jurisdictional power. In this Chapter I shall discuss two of these: first the accidental division taken from the quality of the assistance promised by God to the juris­ dictional intervention; second, the material division, taken from the nature of the things prescribed by the jurisdictional authority. Although the great divisions of the jurisdictional power are thus made from different standpoints, they nevertheless partly overlap on account of the matters they apply to. Hence it will not be possible to keep completely clear of repetitions. h i. THE ACCIDENTAL DIVISION: THE DEGREES OF JURISDICTIONAL ASSISTANCE Without prejudice to more direct and more immediate distinctions, the power of jurisdiction is divisible from an external, accidental but not un­ important standpoint, by grouping the jurisdictional interventions according to the nature of the divine aid, the degree of divine assistance, on which they can count. The results of this study may help us later on to characterize the various speculative and practical pronouncements of the Church. i. HUMAN HESITATION AND DIVINE ASSISTANCE In assisting the depositaries of the power ofjurisdiction, God does not seek to dispense them from effort, reflection or hesitation. He sends them like labourers into the harvest, allowing them to make all kinds of experiments, fortunate or otherwise, to be stored up in the memory of the Church and continually to enrich it with the passing of the centuries. It may seem at times that He leaves her to be the sport of the winds, like the little boat on the Lake of Tiberias, but in reality He never ceases to watch over her, and it is His omnipotence that finally determines her line of movement through history. To adopt another comparison, just as the grace of predestination, without destroying man’s liberty or sparing him trials, brings him infallibly to the goal of salvation, so the grace of divine assistance, without destroying 331 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE the liberty of the jurisdictional power or freeing it from the obligation of enquiry, consultation, reflection and prayer, nevertheless directs its steps infallibly to the great ends that God has assigned it. s. THE JURISDICTIONAL POWER'S THREE TASK'S, CORRESPONDING TO DIFFERENT KINDS OF DIVINE ASSISTANCE What are these great ends assigned to the Church, the great immediate tasks which she must carry out in this world? And in the case of each one of these tasks, what is the area left to the hesitation of human effort and what the area protected by the divine infallibility? We may recognize three distinct tasks for the jurisdictional power, all of them necessary, but not all on the same level. They are mutually ordered among themselves. In the first, the divine assistance will appear in its pre­ eminent form; in the second and the third, which are not immediately divine, the assistance of the Holy Spirit will leave an increasing margin to human initiative and take on a form more and more concealed—without ever leaving them wholly under the laws which rule human behaviour. 3. THE PROPOSITION' OF THE REVELATION ABSOLUTE ASSISTANCE" conjointly with The first and highest task of the jurisdictional power the sacramental power, to manifest the very sources of evangelical grace and truth to the world. The jurisdictional power has to preserve the burden of the divine revelation intact among men, and authoritatively to make clear its contents as the passage of time may require. The least inexactitude here would be a catastrophe. For it is the divine revelation as proposed by the Church that is the object of our theological faith, that is to say of our super­ natural, absolute, final and irrevocable assent. It must therefore be defined in a strictly infallible and irrevocable manner. That is not possible without the help of the highest existing form of the divine assistance. It does not suppress human effort, but it divinely consecrates it; some what as the miracle at Cana consecrated the efforts of the servants who had filled the urns with water. The divine assistance is here infallible in the proper sense and in an absolute manner. By ‘‘infallible assistance in the proper sense” we under­ stand that which divinely guarantees each one of the decisions taken by the jurisdictional power (the assistance would be infallible only in an improper sense, would in fact be fallible, if it guaranteed the exercise of the juris­ dictional power only as a whole and in a general way). And by “absolute infallible assistance we understand that which divinely guarantees as irreformable the speculative and practical pronouncements of the jurisdictional power. It is on this first form of assistance that the primary message of the Church depends. It comprises all those truths that the Church has defined, whether expressly as revealed or simply as infallible; and also dogmatic facts. ■i PERMANENT JURISDICTION: FURTHER DIVISIONS 4. "PROTECTION" OF THE REVELATION AND THE TWO FORMS OF "PRUDENTIAL ASSISTANCE" The second task of the jurisdictional power is still, though less divine, one of the highest dignity. It consists in taking all the measures which, on the one hand, will give Christians secure access to the divine sources of grace and truth, and, on the other, will help to bring the living waters down into their daily lives. To feed Christ’s sheep is not simply to have authority to open the divine pastures for them; it is also to have authority to ward off the dangers that threaten them, and direct their steps, that is to say their interior and exterior actions, towards these pastures. There we have a vast field of measures taken by the canonical power in matters both speculative and practical, and constituting what I have called its secondary message. Here the question is no longer to determine whether such and such a thing is, or is not, revealed, irrevocably defined, of divine institution. It is to deter­ mine whether this thing is adapted to lead minds, hearts and lives nearer to or farther away from what is revealed, irrevocably defined, of divine insti­ tution. Evidently we are in the domain of prudential decisions. The assis­ tance needed now will not have to be “absolute”, as in the preceding case. A relative one will suffice, guaranteeing the prudence of the measures decreed by the canonical power. The more important, universal, permanent and urgent arc the decrees of the canonical power, the more they will engage the wisdom and holiness of the Church. The more particular, circumstantial and temporary they are, the more they will depend on the prudence of her ministers, and the less they will involve the Church herself. Hence the distribution, commonly made by theologians, of the decisions of the canonical power into two major and clearly recognizable categories—between which room can doubtless be found for measures whose nature is not easily determinable. The first category comprises the universal decisions, such as the great speculative and practical teachings of the canonical powers, the laws of the Church, the permanent provisions of her Canon Law; and the second category comprises particular decisions, such as legislative applications and concrete and detailed measures. Corrclativcly to these two species of canonical decision we must recognize two species of relative or prudential assistance: a. First, a relative or prudential assistance which will be, like the absolute assistance, infallible in the proper sense, since it will divinely guarantee the prudence of each particular canonical decision of general interest. b. Second, a relative and prudential assistance which will be, properly speaking, fallible, because it will not guarantee the prudence of each parti­ cular canonical decision, of each concrete legislative application. And yet this assistance could still be called infallible, though now in an improper sense, since the particular decrees of the canonical power particularize the great teachings and laws of the Church, so that the prudence of their general orientation will be thereby guaranteed; and whatever ignorances, 333 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE errors and faults may be found in this domain—and they arc inevitable— wc shall neverdieless be able to hold these decrees to be beneficial on the whole, and in most cases. We may think here of the multitudinous pro­ nouncements made from time to time by provincial councils or by bishops, with a view to the proper regulation of the lives of clergy and laity. 50 5. A TEXT OF ST. THOMAS y U .< î Up to this point we have recognized three kinds of assistance: (1) absolute infallible assistance, guaranteeing the irrcformablc truth of each of the decisions of the declarator,' power; (2) infallible prudential assistance, guaran­ teeing the prudence of each of the universal decisions of the canonical power; and (3) fallible prudential assistance (infallible only in an improper sense), guaranteeing the beneficence of the particular decisions of the canonical power, but only as a whole. I think that this division does not differ from that set up by St. Thomas in the sixteenth article of Quodlibet IX. Speaking of the way on which divine providence assists the juris­ dictional power, he first distinguishes decisions on points of divine faith, in which the judgment of the universal Church, that is, of the declaratory power, cannot go astray: “Certum est quod judicium Ecclesiae universalis errare in his quae ad fidem pertinent, impossibile est.” There we have the absolute and infallible assistance. Next he distinguishes decisions bearing on particular facts, concerned for example with ecclesiastical goods, legal pro­ ceedings and so forth, in which the judgment of the Church, that is, of the canonical power, can be led astray by false testimonies: “In aliis vero sententiis quae ad particularia facta pertinent, ut cum agitur de posses­ sionibus, vel de criminibus, vel de hujusmodi, possibile est judicium Ecclesiae errare propter falsos testes.” There we have the domain of fallible prudential assistance. Finally St. Thomas recognizes a third type of decision, standing between the definitions of the faith and particular decisions, and in which, as we may believe, the Church cannot err even in the exercise of her canoni­ cal power: “Pie credendum est quod nec etiam in his judicium Ecclesiae errare possit.” The Church, he say's, answering difficulties raised about these intermediate decisions, is here led by the instinct of the Holy Spirit who searches all things, even the deep things of God, and divine providence sees to it that she is not here misled by the fallible testimonies of men. St. Thomas speaks here of the canonization of saints which seemed in those days to be a matter of human or purely ecclesiastical faith, as is to-day the beatification of a servant of God (it was only later, following the detailed study of dogmatic facts, provoked by the Jansenist quarrels, that theologians came to regard the canonization of saints as matters of irrevocable definition). Thus then, according to St. Thomas, there is a category of decisions to be held as infallible under pain of sin against piety and due respect for the Church, but not directly under pain of sin against the faith. There we have the domain of infallible prudential assistance. 334 .... A V PERMANENT JURISDICTION: FURTHER DIVISIONS 6. THE “EMPIRICAL EXISTENCE" AND "BIOLOGICAL ASSISTANCE" OF THE CHURCH A third task, to which corresponds a last type of assistance, also prudential, although less strict than the foregoing, devolves on the jurisdictional power. Its first task is to set out the divine revelation infallibly. Its second is to bring the Christian people into touch with this revelation. Its third will be to assure the temporal conditions of the Church’s daily existence in the midst of the world of politics and culture. If such conditions were wholly absent the sacramental and jurisdictional powers could no longer be exercised, nor could the faith be propagated; and that would be the end of Christianity. Tliis, as we know, is impossible. The powers of evil will not prevail against the Church. The conditions needed for the exercise of the sacramental and jurisdictional powers and for the manifestation of the faith, in a word for the biological and empirical existence of the Church, will always be present, if not in a particular region still unconverted or swept by persecution, at least in other parts of the world. In this sense an infallible assistance is promised the Church. I shall call it “biological assistance”. It will be very supple, as might be expected. Here there is no question of defining, or even protecting, a revealed deposit; but only of assuring the temporal conditions of the Church’s spiritual life. Many and various expedients will be possible at all times. Any exact estimate of their value would require the widest know­ ledge, not only of the present, but of the whole course of history in so far as it affects the Kingdom of God. One would have to divine the whole mystery of the growth of things in time; even to know how the divine omnipotence makes use of our errors, our sins, and every other kind of evil. All that is quite beyond us, and here the prudence of the canonical power will always be uncertain. “Che sara domani? . . . Non sappiamo,” said Pius XI, speaking of the results of the Lateran Treaty. The divine assistance promised the Church is here infallible only to assure her physical existence in the world; it spares her neither experiment nor hesitation, nor even govern­ mental mistakes; these last it may even turn to good account. We can thus understand the freedom with which historians like Pastor, who has not lacked pontifical approbation, arc able to pass judgment retrospectively on the fortunate or unfortunate character of the political action of the Popes. 7. THE CHARACTERS OF THE DIVINE ASSISTANCE: a. EXTRINSIC, b. ANALOGICAL, c. POSITIVE a. “If we look only at the persons of those who govern the Church” says St. Thomas (Quodlibel IX, a. 16), “wc should say that they could err in their decisions, but if we consider the divine providence which, according to His promise, rules the Church through the Holy Spirit”, we must judge otherwise. From this we see that the assistance that sustains the Church in the world does not flow from any permanent or habitual principle inherent 335 ^.1 J 1>« i » .* v.w-.rx- THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE I I t I P Μ U i in the Church. It is due to extrinsic providential aid, to a divine influx. However, it is more than a mere inerrancy of fact; it is an inerrancy of right, for the Church can, in all circumstances, count on God’s special help. b. It is easy to distinguish assistance from other exceptional forms of divine aid, for example from the prophetic graces granted to the Apostles, such as revelation or inspiration whether oral or scriptural. By revelation the Holy Spirit made the mysteries of the new faith known to the Apostles. By inspiration the Holy Spirit led the Apostles to express it infallibly whether viva voce (hence Tradition) or in writing (hence the Scriptures). By assistance the Holy Spirit docs not manifest any new mysteries of faith for the Church to hand on to the world; He sustains her supcrnaturally in the fulfilment of her mission. When revelation, inspiration and assistance are thus compared and opposed we are thinking as a general rule of the absolute and infallible assistance which enables the Church to preserve the revealed deposit without error, to define its meaning irrevocably, and to explain its content.1 We are therefore considering assistance in its highest form. However, the juris­ dictional power has other secondary tasks; and it is divinely assisted in the fulfilment of each. The consequence is that the notion of divine assistance must be regarded as analogical. The absolute and infallible assistance wall be its highest form, the highest analogue. Then comes infallible prudential assistance, and then fallible prudential assistance. Finally we have biological assistance, the lowest analogue of all. RH c. It would be an error to think that the divine assistance amounts to no more than a negative aid. The best theologians hold that divine providence sustains the Church rather by positive graces of light and strength than by negative interventions confined to bringing about the failure of ill-conceived 1 “ If the Holy Spirit has been promised to the successors of Peter ” declares the Vatican Council, “ it is not for the purpose of revealing any new doctrine for them to give to the world, but of assisting them to keep safe, and faithfully to expound, the divine revelation given to the Apostles, that is to say the deposit of faith ” (Deiiz. 1836). In Chapter IX of the Primum Schema Constitutionis Dog· miticae de Ecclesia Christi, which had been proposed to the Fathers of the Council, we read: 14 We therefore teach and declare that the privilege of infallibility, which has been revealed to be a perpetual prerogative of the Church of Christ, and which is not to be confused with the charism of inspiration nor held to enrich the Church with new revelations, has been bestowed so that the word of God, transmitted either by Scripture or by Tradition, should be affirmed and kept in the universal Church of Christ, whole and exempt from all contaminations of novelty and change.’* So much as regards those truths defined as revealed: concerning truths defined as absolute and infallible without being expressly defined as revealed : “ The prerogative of infallibility enjoyed by the Church of Christ embraces not only the revealed word in its entirety, but also all truths which, although not [formally] revealed in themselves, are nevertheless of such a nature that without them the revealed word could not be securely preserved, or proposed to faith and explained in any certain and decisive manner, or effectively affirmed and defended against human error and the contra­ dictions of false science.” The corresponding canon runs: 0 If anyone says: The infallibility of the Church is restricted to what is [formally] contained in the divine revelation, and that it docs not extend to other truths necessarily required in order that the revealed deposit may be maintained in its integrity, let him be anathema " (Acta et Decreta Sacrorum Conciliorum, Collectio Lacensis, vol. VII, col. 570 and 577). 33θ 5 i·'' PERMANENT JURISDICTION: FURTHER DIVISIONS measures and reducing their authors to impotence.1 “The privilege of inerrancy or of infallibility guaranteed to the magisterium of the Church” writes Père Clerissac, “cannot then be understood in a purely negative and passive sense which would represent God as only intervening just in time to prevent a mishap. The magisterium of the Church proceeds by positive judgments which imply a profound intelligence, an unlimited discernment. Taken simply in themselves, the formulae in which the Church sets the dia­ mond of dogma are wonderful works. How much more precious is the judgment which they contain! This is the lofty form of prophecy which makes the Church a contemplative of the highest order.”2 The illumin­ ations of the Holy Spirit may be called on to sustain the jurisdictional power even in its lesser tasks. For example, the summoning of Christian princes to a Crusade would appear to be an occasion for simple biological assistance. And yet we know that St. Pius V was supernaturally made aware of the victors' of Lepanto long in advance.3 8. DEFINITION OF DIVINE ASSISTANCE I shall define the divine assistance solely by its formal characteristics and say that it is an exterior aid, a present providential influx, sustaining the jurisdictional power in its triple mission (i) to preserve and expound the 1 ” God preserves the Church from error not only by a negative assistance, but also at need by a positive one ” (J. V. de Groot, O.P., Summa Apologetica de Ecclesia Catholica, p. 284). “ Assistance has two aspects. The first is negative and consists in preventing the Church from misleading herself and others. The second is positive and consists in illuminating the Church so that she knows the truth herself and teaches it to the faithful ” (R. M. Schultes, O.P., De Ecclesia Catholica, p. 285). In his De Ecclesia Christi, p. 368, L. Billot, S.J. rightly rejects the view which, under pretext of better distinguishing the revelation made to the Apostles, would exclude from the divine assistance—which is to safeguard and faithfully expound the revealed deposit—* ■ all inspirations and illuminations and other interior aids of the multiform grace of the Holy Spirit.” What has to be avoided is simply any suggestion of new revelations of Christian truth. ” To those who ask what positive means providence employ’s we answer that they are multiple, and cannot be cnnumcrated in full. Among them we must put first the traditional sense received from the ancients; then explanations given by Sainis and Doctors of the Church, the resources of theological science, the assistant grace of the Spirit of Truth. All these means, when of themselves insufficient to free men from error, will amply suffice nevertheless to achieve their purpose as soon as they are moved by the supreme Wisdom who never fails of His ends and who, in the midst of the most complex and uncertain contingencies, knows how to make an infallible use even of fallible instruments.” 2 The Mystery of the Church (English trans.), London 1937, p. 69. But P. Clérissac is wrong to want to exalt the magisterium of the Church to the point of asserting its superiority even over Scripture. This error, which is common enough, comes from forgetting the distinction between two living or oral transmissions which arc nevertheless irreducible: the one going from Christ and the .Apostles to the primitive Church; and the other coming from the primitive Church to us. The deposit revealed by Christ and the Apostles to the primitive Church by oral or written trans­ mission, Tradition or Scripture, comes to us by another living channel of transmission, which implies assistance only (magisterium). 3 “ . . . the Imperial envoy Cusano, on May 6th, 1570, that is to say about a year and a lialf before die batdc, reports a conversation between Cardinal Comaro and the Pope, and says that Pius V had told the Cardinal of the inspiration he had had about a victory’ over die Turks, remarking at the same time that he had frequently had such experiences when he was praying to God about some very important matter ” (Pastor, History of the Pepes, vol. XVIII, London 1929, p. 450 n.1). 337 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE revealed deposit, (2) to defend it by prudential measures (3) to assure the conditions of its biological existence. If one had to enumerate the wealth of resources it brings into play it would be necessary to accord the highest rank to the firing faith of the Church and the contemplative gifts of know­ ledge and of wisdom which dwell in her in a constant and permanent manner and make her, in this world, the abode in which God hides Himself among men. II. THE MATERIAL DIVISION: SPECULATIVE AND PRACTICAL MESSAGE OF THE CHURCH Μ r I' II > (' J · The material division of the jurisdictional power does not set out to make two really distinct powers of it, one subordinate to the other. It is simply a division of convenience, and can be effected in two ways. We can distinguish between pronouncements of the doctrinal order, whether speculative or practical, whether concerning “faith” or “morals”; and pronouncements of the disciplinary order, relating to acts chiefly exterior. Hence the division into magisterial and disciplinary power. Again, we can distinguish between pronouncements of the speculative order, and those of the practical or moral order, comprising both general principles and disciplinary’ applications. Hence the division into power to announce speculative truth, and power to announce practical truth. If we adopt this second mode of division it will be possible to detail, complete, and illustrate what has been said of the jurisdictional power. i. THE POWER TO ANNOUNCE SPECULATIVE TRUTH I shall first discuss truths guaranteed absolutely (those defined by the declaratory power), and then truths guaranteed prudentially (and taught by the canonical power). A. Truths Guaranteed Absolutely Under this heading we must include—while insisting on their basic homo­ geneity1—the three first degrees of Catholic doctrine, that is to say: a. the explicit revelation as delivered to the Apostles; b. dogma, or truths defined as revealed; c. truths defined in an absolute or irrevocable manner, though not defined as revealed. I. THE EXPLICIT REVELATION “I have called you friends; because all things whatsoever I have heard of my Father, I have made known to you . . . When the Spirit of truth is 1 cf. Fr. Marin-Sola, O.P., L'lzolution homoglne du dogme catholique, Fribourg 1924, vol. I, p. 5. 1 am here summarising Fr. Marin-Sola’s conclusions. 338 PERMANENT JURISDICTION: FURTHER DIVISIONS come, he will teach you all truth ...” (John xv. 15; xvi. 13). The extra­ ordinary light bestowed on the Apostles as founders of the Church enabled them to embrace, in the simplicity of a unique glance and in an eminent manner, the whole revelation of the New Law. What they have handed down to us, the explicitly revealed deposit, contains, either explicitly or implicitly, all the truths of the Christian faith. Henceforth we are not to expect any further revelation of the Spirit inaugurating some new age of the world, or any sort of advance on Christianity. The New Testament, the revealed deposit as it has come to us from the Apostles orally (Tradition) or in writing (Scripture), is final; it will be valid till the end of the world. The Church herself has no authority to modify it. Her mission is simply to keep it intact : “ O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust avoiding the profane novelties of words and oppositions of knowledge falsely so called . . . Hold the form of sound w'ords which thou hast heard of me, in faith and in the love which is in Christ Jesus; keep the good thing committed to thy trust by the Holy Ghost who dwelleth in us” (1 Tim. vi. 20; 2 Tim. i. 13). Similarly, at the end of the Apocalypse it is written: ‘‘If any man shall add to these things, God shall add unto him the plagues written in this book.”1 That is why Pius X condemned the modernist error affirming that revelation, the object of Catholic faith, was not closed at the death of the last Apostle.1 2 The first degree of Catholic doctrine comprises therefore the revealed truths, prior to all elaboration and in the very state in which they were handed on by the Apostles whether orally (Tradition) or in writing (Scripture). This first degree is the starting-point of all dogmatic progress. 2. DOGMAS, OR TRUTHS DEFINED AS REVEALED But if the revealed deposit cannot increase through new revelations, its content at least may be developed indefinitely. Indeed, like every other living thing, its identity is only saved by development.3 The Church there1 The faith, which was implicit before Christ because all the articles of faith were not yet revealed “ was unfolded into determinate articles of faith, and this was done by Christ Consequently, it is not allowable either to add to or to take away anything from the essential articles of faith .. . but the content of each of these articles may be unfolded as time goes on ” (St. Thomas, In III Sent. dist. 25, q. 2, a. 2, quaest. I, ad 5). 2 Decree Lamentabili, Dcnz., 2021. 3 Between Catholicism on the one side and Graeco-Russian dissidence and still more the old Protestantism on the other, the question that arises is whether1 the truth of the Gospel can be pre­ served like a mineral which only keeps its identity by remaining inert (and even those who assert most fiercely that it can are forced to bear with dogmatic progress), or whether it is preserved as a living thing, which keeps its identity only in growth. The profound insight into this problem of a Newman or a Soloviev led them to the Catholic Church. Newman, still Anglican, abundantly illustrated the paradoxical characteristic of life, which saves identity by growth, in his University Sermons (1843) and above all in the Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845). While he was writing this Essay his difficulties disappeared and he resolved to enter the Church, leaving the book unfinished. He expresses himself thus on the Essay in the Apologia Pro Vila Sua (Chapter II): “ That work, I believe, I have not read since I published it, and I do not doubt at all that I have made many mistakes in it; partly from my ignorance of the details of doctrine as the Church of Rome holds them, but partly from my impatience to clear as large a range for the principle of doctrinal development (waiving the question of historical fact) as was consistent with the strict Aposlolicity and identity of the Catholic 339 THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE I fore has a mission to develop and make explicit the deposit entrusted to her, she is like the perfect scribe whom Jesus compares to a householder bringing out of his treasure new things and old (Matt. xiii. 52). And if to preserve a divine deposit and unerringly unfold it needs divine assistance, Jesus will not fail to provide it: “Behold I am with you all days, even to the consum­ mation of the world.” All this is simply scriptural, and the Vatican Council sums it up when marking the rôle of the dogmatic magisterium of the Church: “The doctrine of faith which God has revealed has been committed as a divine deposit to the Spouse of Christ to be faithfully kepi and infallibly declared", to be “reverently guarded and faithfully expounded"? The Church has thus authority and assistance to guard the revealed deposit. The task is superhuman. For it has to be preserved not by hiding it under a vessel but in the act of proclaiming it from the roof tops, and what has to be kept intact and free from alteration is not merely the outward verbal expression but the inward supernatural meaning. The Church is a living teacher repeating the Gospel message to successive generations, either using the very same inspired words (e.g. “ the Word was made flesh”) or equivalent words (e.g. “Jesus is true God and true man”). But the Church would be incapable of preserving the content of the divine revelation like a thing alive, not fixed and immobilized, if she had not power to declare, to manifest, to define its meaning, so as to be able to answer the new questions that are bound to crop up continually as time goes on. Hence a development of the revealed deposit, a dogmatic progress, effected either by way of speculative unfolding, or by way of concrete appli­ cation to contingent facts. First, by way of unfolding. If, for example, it is explicitly revealed that Jesus is true God and true Man, then it is already revealed, but this time implicidy, that in Jesus there are two intellects, one divine and one human, and two trills, one divine and one human. If it is revealed that Christ declared that what He offered under the appearance of bread was His Body, then it is already revealed, but implicitly, that in that upper room there took place an extraordinary' change of one substance into another, a trans-substantiation. The Church, divinely assisted, can therefore define as revealed by the Gospel itself, that in Jesus are two intelligences and two creed." As to Neiman's definitive thought, cf. Marin-Sola, O.P., L'ézolutian homogène du dogme catho­ lique, vol. 1, pp. 347-353. As to Soloviev, he wrote between 1882 and 1884: “It would be futile on this account [the dissimilarity between acorn and tree] to conclude that trunk and branches and leaves will later be supplied artificially from outside, to deny that the acorn can produce them, to deny the tree itself and admit the existence only of the acorn as wc see it. It is equally unreasonable to deny the more complex, more dearly manifested forms which divine grace assumes in the Church and to want to go back to those of the primitive Christian community ” (God, Man and the Church the Spiritual Foundations of Life, trans. D. Attwater, London, p. 151). 1 “ Neque enim fidei doctrina, quam Deus revelavit, vehit philosophicum inventum proposita et humanis ingeniis perficienda, sed tanquam divinum depositum Christi Sponsae tradita, fideliter custodienda et infallibili ter declaranda ” (Dcnz., 1800). “ Neque enim Petri successoribus Spiritus sanctus promissus est ut, eo revelante, novam doctrinam patefcccrent, sed ut, eo assistente, traditam per apostolos revelationem seu fidei depositum sancte custodirent et fideliter exponerent ” (Dcnz., 1836). 34° PERMANENT JURISDICTION: FURTHER DIVISIONS wills; that the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist presupposes trans­ substantiation. And this she has done; in the first case at the third Council of Constantinople, and in the second at the Council of Trent. The progress of the revealed deposit is here effected by simple unfolding, by passing from a truth revealed implicitly and “in itself”, to the same truth revealed explicitly and “for us”. The development of the revealed deposit may be effected once more by its application to contingent realities. For if a universal proposition is explicitly revealed, then all the particular propositions that it contains will be thereby implicitly revealed. For example, it is explicitly revealed that the Church is infallible, in other words that every Council that is truly oecumenical, that is, truly representative of the Church, is infallible; and thereby it is revealed in advance that the Councils of Nicaea, Trent, the Vatican, etc., if oecu­ menical, are infallible. It is revealed explicitly that the Church has sufficient light to teach the evangelical doctrine, in other words to discern what is conformable or contrary to the evangelical doctrine; and thereby it is revealed in advance that the Canon of the Mass, if solemnly guaranteed by the Church, is free from error. It is explicitly revealed that Peter is to feed the sheep of Christ till the end of the world, in other words that the authentic successor of Peter has supreme jurisdiction over the Christian people; and thereby it is revealed in advance that Pius XI, if an authentic successor of Peter, has supreme jurisdiction over the Christian people. Once the con­ dition laid down in these three examples is verified—not in a fallible manner as would be the result of a merely human enquiry, but infallibly as in the case of a declaration (implicit or explicit) of the Church divinely assisted to recognize the points that involve her whole destiny—the revealed universal proposition will be applied to a particular case, and the judgments of fact wc have mentioned will appear, with absolute certainty, as implicitly re­ vealed. They will become credible with divine faith; they will eminently deserve the name of dogmatic facts;1 they can be solemnly defined as such; as it is defined for example that the Canon of the Mass is free from error. 2 1 However, theologians who do not accept Niarin-Sola's conclusions still restrict the term " dog­ matic facts ” to facts defined absolutely, without being defined as revealed. 2 Declaration of the Council of Trent, Denz., 953. “ Since it is not revealed that every Host contains the Body of Jesus Christ, but only that every consecrated Host docs so, it follows that to know whether any particular Host contains It must depend on a condition, namely whether or not it is consecrated. Now, on the one hand, since tills condition depends on a number of fallible factors, its fulfilment cannot be absolutely guaranteed save by an infallible definition of the Church; and, on the other hand, her infallibility cannot be brought to bear on a particular fact, such as the consecration of a Host, which docs not involve the faith of the whole Church. This then is not a matter of divine faith, but simply of human faith or prudence . . . Facts like these, concerning reli­ gion as they do, but not the faith of the whole Church, are not definable and never become ‘ dog­ matic facts But if wc ask whether such and such a Council is oecumenical, whether a certain Pope is truly Pope, whether a particular version of the Bible is authentic, whether such and such propositions, orthodox or heterodox, arc contained in such and such a book, etc. etc., and if wc do this prior to the definition of the Church, wc have so many questions of fact on which it is possible to be deceived; and hence there can be no question of divine faith in spite of all universal revela­ tions. But since these facts concern the faith of the whole Church, and not that of such and such a particular person only, they can be infallibly defined by the Church, and therefore, after that, 341 Μ 72 % THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE It falls therefore within the competence of the Church firstly to propose, as object of divine faith, the truths explicitly revealed in the oral or written deposit, as handed down to us by the Apostles and Evangelists (revealed deposit). She is competent secondly to propose, as object of divine faith, truths which are included in the foregoing, but which, although from the outset revealed implicitly and “in themselves”, were not yet revealed explicitly and “for us” (dogmatic definitions). That is not all: she is com­ petent, thirdly, to propose certain propositions to the faithful the truth of which she absolutely guarantees, but without expressly putting them for­ ward as revealed or as objects of divine faith (infallible irrevocable defini­ tions, but not put forward as dogmatic). » I' I 1' b h μ 3- TRUTHS DEFINED IRREVOCABLY, BUT NOT AS REVEALED a. Accord of Theologians These last pronouncements bear cither on doctrines which are in logically necessary connection with a truth of faith, or on facts in morally necessary connection with the primary end of the Church, which is to preserve and explain the revealed deposit;1 doctrines and facts so closely related to the revealed deposit that their denial would at once imperil the deposit itself. Thus among these irrevocable pronouncements are to be included certain condemnations of doctrinal propositions which, though not heretical or directly contrary' to the faith, are erroneous, bordering on heresy, and indirectly against the faith. Let us consider as examples picked out at hap­ hazard (and on my own responsibility, since they arc not expressly said to represent irrevocable decisions), the following condemned propositions: “The prince or the bishop loses his power as soon as he falls into sin” (Wicliff, Hus) ; “ Man, after the fall, was at first abandoned to his own human resources so that he might learn to desire supernatural aid” (Synod of Pistoia); “Indulgences liberate only from the canonical penance imposed by the Church, not from the temporal punishment of sin imposed by divine justice” (Synod of Pistoia). A theologian would have no difficulty in showing that such errors would tend to the destruction of the revealed deposit: the first misconceives the nature of the spiritual jurisdiction of the Church and of the temporal jurisdiction of society’; the second the relations between nature and grace; and the third the promise: “Whatsoever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” they can be of divine faith. Phis faith is due to them not precisely because of the Church's defini­ tion, but on account of their inclusion in the revealed universal, an inclusion which the Church’s definition does not ttzurr, but makes infallibly bwtrn to us” (Fr. Marin-Sola O.P., op. cit., vol. I, p· 471)· < I 1 I shall discuss later, in connection with the canonical power, those things that stand in morally necessary connection with the secondary end of the Church: which is to prepare souls to receive and serve the revealed deposit, cf. p. 363. PERMANENT JURISDICTION: FURTHER DIVISIONS Similarly, certain pronouncements concerning contingent facts can be infallibly and irrevocably defined by the Church. She has infallibly declared diat the five condemned propositions ofjansenius really figure in his book in an heretical sense; in the canonization of a saint she pronounces infallibly on the holiness of a human life; in giving final approval to a religious order she declares that the new Rule, in virtue of its general tenor—not merely on account of the three vows—is calculated to lead souls to perfection; she can declare infallibly that such and such a treaty is unjust or that a given contract is usurious or simoniacal. And indeed, if the whole Church could be deceived in appreciating how the burden of a book—Jansenius’, for instance—stands to that of the Gospel, she could no longer teach men infallibly the doctrine of Christ;1 if she could go astray in appreciating a life—St. Teresa’s for instance—or a monastic rule, or a treaty or a contract, as related to the Gospel teachings, she would no longer be an infallible guide to sanctity, which is nevertheless the ideal of Christian life. Theologians are unanimous in recognizing the infallibility of the Church in the above-mentioned matters. Many make it itself a point of faith. At the Vatican Council a canon had even been prepared with a view to the solemn definition as an article of faith of the doctrine that the infallibility of the Church is not “restricted simply to what is contained in the divine revelation”, but “extends also to other truths necessarily required to ensure the integrity of the revealed deposit”.2 b. Two Different Theological Explanations Here however the differences begin. Do these truths, absolutely defined because “necessarily required” for the preservation of the revealed deposit, form a part of that revealed deposit, or are they outside it? They express, as we have said, doctrine that is in logically necessary connection with a truth of the faith, and facts in morally necessary connection with the primary ends of the Church. How are we to understand this necessary connection? The essential properties of a circle are involved in its definition; they are not really but only conceptually distinct from it, and you cannot destroy the first without destroying the second. That is a case of intrinsic or metaphysical connection. But the physical properties of a body, an actual radiation for example, while bound up with the nature of the body, are really distinct from the body and could even be separated from it by a miracle. That is extrinsic or physical connection. Under which head fall those truths that are irrevocably defined by the Church—under intrinsic or extrinsic connection? 1 When Innocent X had condemned as heretical five theses drawn from the Augustinus ofjan­ senius, the Jansenists set themselves to distinguish between the right of the matter and the fact, and pretended that although the five theses, thus detached, were certainly heretical, yet in the context of the Augustinus they were really orthodox. It was then that Alexander VII infallibly declared and defined that the five dieses were condemned precisely in die sense they bore in die book. 5 Primum Schema Constitutionis de Ecclesia can. IX; Collectio Lacensis, vol. VII, col. 577. 343 'N ! -I THE CHURCH OF THE WORD INCARNATE » » »♦ e t?/ II |I i h ·■ ft *