July 2007 Print

Was St. Francis Xavier a Forerunner of Vatican II?

 

The modern-day Jesuits are arguing that St. Francis Xavier anticipated the teaching of Vatican II on the salvation of unbelievers. That teaching, according to Jesuit Superior General, Fr. Kolvenbach, is "that God will offer salvation to those who did not come to know Christ." St. Francis believed no such thing. Here's why.

 

The April 2006 issue of 30 Days published an interview with the Provost General of the Society of Jesus, Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, on the 500th anniversary of the birth of St. Francis Xavier. He was asked by 30 Days:

Cardinal Tucci has written that it would be easy to see in Xavier the mentality of the conquistador of those times. Whereas, the cardinal continues, what motivated Xavier was the conviction that nobody can be saved without having received baptism. What example and teaching can one draw from that?

Fr. Kolvenbach replied:

In many aspects Xavier was a child of his times. The theology he learned in Paris and the religious milieu in which he had lived, considered baptism an absolute necessity for salvation. Xavier suffered greatly when he saw the Japanese weeping after having told them that their ancestors were damned to hell because of not being baptized. As a result Xavier set more emphasis on the mercy of God who would accept the righteous lives of those who were blamelessly ignorant of the necessity of baptism. Guided by the Church and by the Second Vatican Council, we know today that the seed of truth is to be found in all mankind, and that God will offer salvation to those who did not come to know Christ. But that was not the doctrine at the time of Xavier.

The Apostolic Tradition

We do not know exactly what theology St. Francis Xavier learned in Paris (in any case, not the "New Theology" of Vatican II) nor in what religious milieu he lived, but it seems to us impossible that either he or his Parisian professors would not have known (and would not have cared) that

since antiquity, the Church has considered that baptism of water (baptismus fluminis) can be supplied by martyrdom suffered for Christ (baptism of blood–baptismus sanguinis), as well as by the desire for baptism accompanied by perfect contrition (baptismus flaminis).¹

The Fathers of the Church, witnesses of the Apostolic Tradition, combatted the abuse of those who postponed baptism until the end of their lives, counting on baptism of desire. St. Gregory Nazianzen, for example, said that whoever in this life has been content with baptism of desire, in the next life will have to be content with the desire of beatitude (Orat. 40, 23); and St. Augustine, citing the Centurion Cornelius (Acts 10) as an example of baptism of desire, remarks that he promptly received baptism of water (De Bapt. 4, 22).

The abuse, combatted by the Fathers, bears witness to the antiquity of the doctrine of baptism of desire, and the Fathers' combat bears witness to the doctrine according to which whoever can receive water baptism must receive it: the desire of baptism cannot supply the sacrament when, being able to receive it, one neglects to do so.

If, however, there is neither refusal nor negligence, but a real impossibility (physical or moral) of receiving water baptism, the Fathers unanimously ascribe to baptism of desire the virtue of making up for water baptism. Thus St. Ambrose in his funeral oration for the Emperor Valentinian II, slain by Arbogast when he was still a catechumen, said:

But I hear that you grieve because he did not receive the sacrament of baptism. Tell me: What else is in your power other than the desire, the request? But he even had this desire for a long time, that, when he should come into Italy, he would be initiated, and recently he signified a desire to be baptized by me....Has he not, then, the grace which he desired; has he not the grace which he requested? And because he asked, he received.²

Elsewhere he says: "I have lost someone I was going to regenerate, but he has not lost the grace he requested."³ We might add that the doctrine on the limbo of children, which some today would like to cast into oblivion, is connected to the doctrine of baptism of desire: baptism of water is of an absolute necessity for children precisely because, being still without the use of reason, they are incapable of baptism of desire, as Pius XII reaffirmed in his famous allocution to midwives.

The Traditional Doctrine Defended and Expounded by the Scholastics

The doctrine of the Fathers was defended, at Paris in fact, against Abelard by the first Schoolmen, in particular by Hugh of St. Victor and by St. Bernard, who wrote: "By simple faith and by desire of baptism, a man can be justified" (Ep. 77, 8). The major Scholastics (especially St. Thomas) deepened the Patristic doctrine on baptism of desire:

The sacrament of Baptism is said to be necessary for salvation in so far as man cannot be saved without, at least, Baptism of desire; "which, with God, counts for the deed" (Augustine, Enarr. in Ps. 57).⁴

Baptism of desire essentially consists in the fact that

a man receives the effect of Baptism by the power of the Holy Ghost, not only without Baptism of Water, but also without Baptism of Blood: forasmuch as his heart is moved by the Holy Ghost to believe in and love God and to repent of his sins.⁵

Here St. Thomas appeals to the authority of St. Augustine and St. Cyprian:

Thus, therefore, each of these other Baptisms is called Baptism, forasmuch as it takes the place of Baptism. Wherefore Augustine says (De Unico Baptismo Parvulorum iv): "The Blessed Cyprian argues with considerable reason from the thief to whom, though not baptized, it was said: 'Today shalt thou be with Me in Paradise' that suffering can take the place of Baptism. Having weighed this in my mind again and again, I perceive that not only can suffering for the name of Christ supply for what was lacking in Baptism, but even faith and conversion of heart, if perchance on account of the stress of the times the celebration of the mystery of Baptism is not practicable" (De Baptismo contra Donatist., c. 22).⁶

From the same passage of St. Augustine, Peter Lombard concluded: "It is evident that some can be justified and saved without baptism [of water]" (Sent. d.4, c.4).

The Church has thus always taught the necessity of baptism, but she has never taught (except for children without the use of reason) the absolute necessity of water baptism for salvation in the case of a genuine impossibility, physical or moral, of receiving it.

The Magisterium

Innocent II, called upon to resolve the case of an unbaptized dead person, refers to St. Augustine and St. Ambrose, and recommends preserving the doctrine handed down by the Fathers on baptism of desire (Dz. 388). Innocent III, in his turn, declared that no one can baptize himself, even in a case of necessity, but in a case of necessity a man can be saved by faith in the sacrament even without the sacrament of faith: "Propter sacramenti fidem, etsi non propter fidei sacramentum" (Dz. 413). This doctrine was defined by the Council of Trent, which taught that one cannot be justified "except through the laver of regeneration, or a desire for it–sine lavacro regenerationis eius voto fieri non potest" (Dz. 796).

If there were a novelty at the time of St. Francis Xavier, it was this: until the great geographical discoveries, it was believed that the gospel had been preached to the entire world; then many peoples were discovered to whom the gospel had not been preached. Even so, all their ancestors should not have been consigned to hell; rather, the missionaries should have applied the ancient teaching on baptism of desire, a doctrine the Fathers of the Church had already applied to the pagans who had not been able to hear of Christ.

In this case, one cannot speak of negligence or contempt of the sacrament, but invincible ignorance, and hence a real moral impossibility of receiving water baptism, which is why it is necessary to attribute to baptism of desire (if this desire is present by an action of grace) the virtue of making up for water baptism. The desire for baptism can be explicit, as for catechumens who die before being baptized, but it can also be implicit in the general desire to accomplish in all things the will of God.⁷ What remains a secret of God is the number of those who are saved by this extraordinary means (the ordinary way is that of faith received through hearing: fides ex auditu, whence the need of missionaries), and it is certain that in this extraordinary way, they are deprived of the assurance of salvation and the ordinary means of attaining it dispensed by the Church.⁸

Thus those who would exclude from salvation men united to the Church by baptism of desire (explicit or implicit) are condemned, as well as those who affirm that all men can be saved by their natural rectitude in all religions (indifferentism). Considering what Fr. Kolvenbach asserts, at the sight of the tears shed by the Japanese, St. Francis would have gone from the first error to the second error, and this second error...would be the "fruit" ripened by Vatican II, the ecumenism which in practice unconditionally and without distinction extends baptism of desire to all the infidels, rendering water baptism and the missions unnecessary.

Naturalism

Fr. Kolvenbach attributes to St. Francis Xavier the error of holding that "God would accept the righteous lives of those who were blamelessly ignorant of the necessity of baptism."⁹ On this point, too, there is a constant teaching of the Church: since man's final end is supernatural, it is impossible for him to be saved by natural rectitude alone (which undoubtedly disposes man to receive grace, but which cannot replace it); to be saved, supernatural faith is necessary. That is why, while water baptism in given circumstances can be supplied by baptism of blood and of desire (even implicit), for adults supernatural faith cannot in any instance be supplied (it is only for little baptized children that it is supplied by the faith of the Church).

Holy Scripture and the magisterium are categoric: "But without faith it is impossible to please God" (Heb. 11:6); St. Clement of Rome declared that no one has ever been justified without supernatural faith (Epist., I ad Cor. XXIII). The doctrine of St. Cyprian, of St. Ambrose, of St. John Chrysostom, of St. Cyril of Alexandria, of St. Gregory the Great, etc. is the same. The Council of Orange (529) requires a supernatural faith for our regeneration that, from the outset, is the work of grace (Dz. 178), and the Council of Trent affirms that "without this [supernatural] faith, no one was ever justified" (Session 6, Chapter 7), and anathematizes anyone who would dare maintain that justification is the fruit of human efforts and does not proceed first from the inspiration of the Holy Ghost (Canon 8).

In this regard, one finds in the decrees of the Council of Orange a definition which is an anticipated condemnation of today's ecumenism:

Canon 5. If anyone says, that just as the increase [of faith] so also the beginning of faith and the very desire of credulity...is not through the gift of grace, that is, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit reforming our will from infidelity to faith, from impiety to piety, but is naturally in us, he is proved to be antagonistic to the doctrine of the Apostles, since blessed Paul says: ..."By grace you are made safe through faith, and this not of yourselves; for it is the gift of God" [Eph. 2:8]. For those who say that faith, by which we believe in God, is natural, declare that all those who are alien to the Church of Christ are in a measure faithful.¹⁰

And is not this the abnormal conclusion the ecumenists draw today from their fundamental naturalism? The absolute necessity of supernatural faith was reiterated by the dogmatic Vatican Council I:

But, since "without faith it is impossible to please God" [Heb. 11:6] and to attain to the fellowship of His sons, hence, no one is justified without it; nor will anyone attain eternal life except "he shall persevere unto the end in it" [Mt. 10:22; 24:13].¹¹

It should be noted that the Council continues by affirming that it was for this purpose that the Church was founded, "that we may satisfactorily perform the duty of embracing the true faith and of continuously persevering in it."¹²

Moreover, it is certain that God gives all infidels without personal guilt (infideles negativi) grace sufficient for their salvation. The universality of the divine salvific will and the [objective] universality of redemption render inadmissible the fact that a very large part of the human race would be refused the necessary and sufficient grace for salvation. That is why Alexander VIII, in 1690, condemned the propositions of the Jansenists according to which the pagans, Jews, and heretics receive no influx of grace from Christ.¹³ The Holy Spirit thus acts outside the visible boundaries of the Church in order to push souls towards the Church, if they do not resist, at least by desire.

This Catholic doctrine on the necessity of supernatural faith for the salvation of adults was reaffirmed and defended by the Roman Pontiffs until Vatican II. Thus Pius IX (Quanto Conficiamur Moerore, August 10, 1863), speaking of infidels who by misfortune, without personal fault, find themselves in a state of invincible ignorance with regard to our holy religion, but diligently observe the natural law, clarifies that they can attain eternal life, not in virtue of their natural righteousness, but "by the operating power of divine light and grace,"¹⁴ (to which their natural righteousness disposes them).

Later, Pope Pius XII in the Letter of the Holy Office to the Archbishop of Boston (August 8, 1949), speaking of baptism of desire, clarified:

But it must not be thought that any kind of desire of entering the Church suffices that one may be saved. It is necessary that the desire by which one is related to the Church be animated by perfect charity. Nor can an implicit desire produce its effect, unless a person has supernatural faith.¹⁵

Now, according to Fr. Kolvenbach, what is the novelty which, "guided by the Church and by the Vatican II Ecumenical Council," we would have discovered? It is this: "The seed of truth is to be found in all mankind, and that God will offer salvation to those who did not come to know Christ."

Now, if that means that the infidel possesses in himself a natural light (moral and religious) which, if he does not extinguish it by his personal sins but, on the contrary, regulates his life according to it, it already leads him toward salvation because God, who desires that all of us be saved, does not refuse His grace to one who does what he can to be saved, then we are in the line of Tradition, and Vatican II teaches us nothing new. But if that means that the infidel in good faith is saved in virtue of his own natural righteousness (without grace, without supernatural faith, and without the Holy Spirit), then Vatican II would be teaching us something new, but not something good; rather, it is something the Church has already condemned several times, and which we cannot accept; something that St. Francis Xavier could not have taught (and certainly did not teach) without betraying his mission.

 

Hirpinus

 

Translated exclusively by Angelus Press from Courrier de Rome, February 2007, pp. 6-8.

 

 

¹ This is the way B. Bartmann expresses it in his excellent Manual of Theology (Ed. Paoline), III, 89. The adjective "excellent" does not apply, however, to the additions to the Italian version made by Natale Bussi.

² De Obitu Valent., 51.

³ Ibid.

⁴ St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, III, Q.68, Art.1, ad 3.

⁵ Ibid., Q.66, Art.11.

⁶ Ibid.

⁷ Pius XII, Letter of the Holy Office to the Archbishop of Boston, August 8, 1949. [This letter has been reprinted in both Latin and English as an appendix in Baptism of Desire: A Patristic Commentary (Kansas City: Angelus Press, 1999), pp. 65-73.–Ed.]

⁸ Pius XI, Singulari Quadam; Pius XII, Mystici Corporis.

⁹ "It's the Lord who makes the difference," 30 Days, April 2006, p. 14.

¹⁰ Dz. 178.

¹¹ Dz. 1793.

¹² Ibid.

¹³ Dz. 1294-95.

¹⁴ Dz. 1677.

¹⁵ Baptism of Desire: A Patristic Commentary, p. 72.