TrapCast Express
TrapCast Express, it's Wednesday, November 11th, 2020.
On September 30th, the conservative Novosorto Crisis Magazine
published an article by Declan Leary entitled
Yes, Biden is Catholic, That's the Problem.
Throughout his piece, Leary argues that because former Vice President Joe Biden
was once baptized and confirmed, he is therefore irrevocably a Roman Catholic.
Now, I'm not looking to lay too much blame on the author here.
He is of a youthful age and the victim of a Jesuit education,
having just graduated from John Carroll University outside of Cleveland.
At the same time, if you're writing a post on what it takes to be a Catholic,
you should at least know that...
that it is possible to cease being a Catholic.
Leary doesn't think so, though.
He writes, quote,
Ouch. Yeah.
Leary means the indelible character of the sacraments, of course.
Indelible means unable to be removed or erased.
Ineligible.
Deluctible, by contrast, means unable to be resisted or avoided.
Inescapable.
So, baptism and confirmation, just like holy orders,
imprints an indelible character on the recipient,
which means the sacrament cannot and need not be repeated.
Once baptized, always baptized, and so on.
The mark can never be erased.
But it would be a great mistake to think that the valid reception
of the baptismal character makes it so that the sacrament can be erased.
It makes one forever a Catholic.
Even Adolf Hitler was baptized, for heaven's sake.
But more on that in a moment.
First, let's see what else Leary writes.
Quote,
Joe Biden cannot choose not to be a Catholic,
and we cannot choose to stop calling him Catholic,
whatever monstrous public sins he may undertake.
The determination is above his ability and ours to alter.
This is no mere semantic distinction.
We do a great disservice to the power of the Church
when we accept that politics can prevail over her sacraments.
Unquote.
All right, I guess the editorial standards at Crisis Magazine
are at an all-time low these days.
It's obvious that the author here is completely clueless
about what makes one a member of the Church
and how Church membership can be forfeited,
which has nothing to do with the sacraments.
Now, since Pope Pius XII pretty much said,
settled that whole issue,
let me quote straight from his 1943 encyclical,
Mystici Corporis.
Quote,
Actually, only those are to be included as members of the Church
who have been baptized and profess the true faith,
and who have not been so unfortunate
as to separate themselves from the unity of the body
or been excluded by legitimate authority
for grave faults committed.
For in one spirit,
says the Apostle,
were we all baptized into one body,
whether Jews or Gentiles,
whether bond or free.
As, therefore, in the true Christian community
there is only one body,
one spirit,
one Lord,
and one baptism,
so there can be only one faith.
And, therefore, if a man refused to hear the Church,
let him be considered,
so the Lord commands,
as a heathen and a publican.
It follows that those who are divided in faith
or government,
cannot be living in the unity of such a body,
nor can they be living the life of its one divine spirit.
Nor must one imagine that the body of the Church,
just because it bears the name of Christ,
is made up during the days of its earthly pilgrimage
only of members conspicuous for their holiness,
or that it consists only of those
whom God has predestined to eternal happiness.
It is owing to the Savior's infinite mercy
that place is allowed,
in his mystical body here below,
for those whom, of old,
he did not exclude from the banquet.
For not every sin,
however grave it may be,
is such as of its own nature
to sever a man from the body of the Church,
as does schism,
or heresy,
or apostasy.
Men may lose charity and divine grace through sin,
thus becoming incapable of supernatural merit,
and yet not be deprived of all life,
if they hold fast to faith and Christian hope,
and if, illumined from above,
they are spurred on by the interior promptings
of the Holy Spirit to salutary fear
and are moved to prayer and penance
for their sins."
And that was paragraphs 22 and 23
of Pius XII's encyclical,
Mystici Corporis.
In short, the Church distinguishes
between sins that do not automatically
sever one from the Church
and sins that do.
The sins that do separate one from the Church
by themselves,
that is, automatically,
apart from any law or intervention
of ecclesiastical authority,
are heresy, apostasy,
and schism, if public.
It's important to understand,
as Pius XII says,
that these sins separate one from the Church
by their very nature.
So it's not because of how grave
these sins are,
that they make one a non-Catholic,
although they are very grave, of course,
but because of what type of sin they are.
A man who publicly declares
that he does not believe in the Catholic faith,
or who publicly refuses to be subject
to the lawful Pope,
cannot at the same time be a member
of the Catholic Church,
else membership in the Church has no meaning.
The Church requires that all her members
profess the same faith,
that is essential because the Church
was founded by God to be one in faith.
And that unity of faith is guaranteed
by the Roman Pontiff, the Pope.
Another type of unity God gave the Church
is that of government.
The members of the Church are necessarily
all governed, ultimately,
by the same single authority, the Pope.
Now that requires submission to Him,
such that those who refuse Him the submission,
not only in matters of faith and morals,
but also in matters of faith and morals,
but also in matters of law and discipline,
are, by that very fact,
no longer members of the Church.
This refusal, too, must be public
in order for it to result in automatic loss
of Church membership,
because the Church is visible,
and it must therefore be possible
to determine who her members are
in a kind of objective
and externally verifiable fashion.
No one could know or verify
what goes on in secret,
and so since Church membership
is a public thing,
loss of Church membership must be as well.
So those are the ways
that one will necessarily always cease
to be a member of the Catholic Church automatically
if one publicly defects from the faith,
either by heresy or apostasy,
or if one publicly refuses submission
to the Roman Pontiff.
And that's because these sins
are inherently incompatible
with Church membership.
The Church is,
is the congregation of the faithful.
Sismatics aren't congregated
and heretics and apostates
aren't faithful.
Now there is one other way
that one can cease to be a member of the Church,
though it requires a Church law
or a Church judgment to affect it,
and that is by excommunication.
Because, obviously,
the Church can expel certain Catholics
from her, rendering them non-Catholics
by such an act.
Now I don't want to get into the details,
here, because it's not necessary
and it gets a bit complicated
because not every excommunication
results in loss of Church membership,
but for our purposes here,
it suffices to note that Catholics
can be expelled from the Church
by means of excommunication
for certain very grave crimes committed.
Now, notice that in none of what we just looked at
does the question of the indelible character
of baptism or confirmation,
ever come up.
In fact, since baptism is necessary
to be a member of the Church to begin with,
one must be baptized
to be able to ever cease being a Catholic,
since you cannot lose Church membership
if you never had it.
So, when we talk about loss of Church membership,
we are talking about people
who once were members of the Church,
and that requires that they were once baptized.
But Declan Leary, in his article,
at Crisis, claims that it is impossible
to cease being a Catholic
because baptism is indelible,
or, as he put it, ineluctable.
But that indelible character
is not what determines Church membership.
If it did, then that would mean
that the Eastern Orthodox, for example,
or the Lutherans, are also members
of the Catholic Church
because they, too, have a valid baptism.
Well, that would be absurd.
Now, let's remember what Pope Pius XII said.
He said that,
only those are to be included
as members of the Church
who have been baptized
and profess the true faith
and who have not been so unfortunate
as to separate themselves
from the unity of the body
or been excluded by legitimate authority
for grave faults committed.
So, baptism alone doesn't cut it.
You may be baptized,
but once you cease professing the true faith
or cease maintaining communion with the Pope
and the other members of the Church,
it's over.
So, what does that mean
for the indelible sacramental character, then?
Is it useless?
No.
Fr. Sylvester Berry explains it well
in his book, The Church of Christ.
Quote,
The spiritual character imprinted upon the soul
in baptism does not make one a member of the Church.
It is, rather, a sign or badge
showing that he has received the rites of initiation,
but it does not prove that he retains membership.
This may be illustrated by the case
of a person receiving a tattoo mark
as a sign of initiation into a society
that uses such marking.
If the person afterward leave the society,
he would cease to be a member,
though he still bore the indelible sign
of his initiation.
Unquote.
That's from The Church of Christ,
page 129 in the 1955 edition
and page 227 in the 1927 edition.
So there is the answer.
The indelible character of baptism
does not prove you're a Catholic now and forever.
It only proves you were once baptized
into the Catholic Church.
Whether or not you are a member of the Church now
depends on whether you profess the Catholic faith
and submit to the Pope,
if there is a Pope, that is,
which is not the case now,
and whether you have not been expelled
from the Church by excommunication.
So, is Joe Biden,
a Catholic?
In the sense in which that term was understood
until the death of Pope Pius XII in 1958?
No, of course not.
He's what we would call a Novus Ordo,
or a Vatican II Catholic, if you will.
Further on in his article,
Leary describes how Biden is really just
an average American Novus Ordo
in terms of what he believes
and how he acts.
And I think he's got a point.
The problem, of course,
is that the average Novus Ordo
isn't a Catholic either.
But then, neither is the so-called Pope,
Francis.
And if the Pope doesn't have to be a Catholic
to be part of the institution
Leary calls the Catholic Church,
then neither does Biden.
And that conclusion,
ladies and gentlemen,
is truly ineluctable.
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