II

'K
|||
I

I

i

6
’Ey î.vl πνΐΰματι, μιζ. ψυχβ
συναβλουντα tÿ πίστα, τον àayyëhiov
Phil. 1:27

Published by

THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA PRESS

■■s

1

116

THE AMERICAN ECCLESIASTICAL REVIEW

The key to Old Testament teaching is to perceive and apply
this progress. An illustration may serve to clarify my point. In
the first chapter of Genesis is found a cosmogony or a description
of the origin of the universe. It is impossible to understand the
author’s cosmogony without understanding his cosmology. Our
cosmology is different. We consider the sun the center of the
universe; he considered the earth the center. Furthermore, he
considered the firmament a solid mass restraining waters above,
as he conceived the earth floating in the abyss below. Scientific
progress has altered our viewpoint, and to understand what he
describes we must understand his viewpoint. An example next of
ethical progress: the ethics of Jephte in offering his daughter in
human sacrifice in fulfillment of a vow made to God. There can
be no doubt that Jephte’s environment influenced him. The
neighboring pagans practiced human sacrifice. The ethics of a
solemn vow was accepted by Jephte and his daughter. He offered
her to God in what he viewed as an act of religion. Remembering
that Jephte antedates not only the code of Christ, but also the
code of Moses, his act does not shock one so terribly, and his tre­
mendous faith and loyalty stand out.
What, you may ask, is the value inherent in this knowledge?
I think one value asserts itself immediately, namely, the objective
contrast between the Old Law and the New bring out the im­
measurable pre-eminence of the gospel.
These things are written not in the pretense of being a complete
case, but in the hope that the revered but unknown Book may
become better known and more revered—and loved, for to love
the Word of God U almost the same as loving God.

I

John J. Dougherty
Immaculate Conception Seminary,
Darlington, N. J.

Mission Intention

I

“Aid to the Superiors of the Missions that are to be restored” »
the Mission Intention for the month of August, 1947.

!

BROWNSON ON SALVATION AND THE CHURCH
It seems nearly all who have touched upon Brownson’s ex­
position of the dogma Extra ecclesiam nulla salus have overlooked
certain psychological factors which in certain instances may have
and in others certainly did, incline him to strict interpretation of
that solemn definition of the Church. He did not altogether agree
with the liberal concessions generally made by Catholics in
regard to the good faith of those outside the Church. There is an
interesting story related in the biography of Brownson by his son
Henry. The incident occured before Brownson’s conversion to
the Church. Brownson had been on a lecture tour and, on his way
home, while in Washington, he was one day discussing with
Calhoun and Buchanan the necessity of the Catholic Church for
salvation, when suddenly Daniel Webster joined them. Buchanan
turned to Webster, and said: “We were talking about the Cath­
olic Church, and I, for one, am pretty well convinced that it is
necessary to become a Catholic to get to heaven.” “Have you
just found that out?” asked Webster. “Why, I’ve known that for
years." It should be noted, however, that Brownson’s expressions
of diffidence regarding the good faith of many outside the Church
are of such a general nature as could be based only on general
observations—whatever their validity.
It is also possible that Brownson was somewhat inclined to the
strict construction of this particular dogma due to circumstances
in his own case. Humanly speaking, it was with great reluctance
that he went out from the midst of his Protestant brethren. His
desertion from their ranks and conversion to the Church could
not be looked upon by them otherwise than as a disappoint­
ment—especially by those who belonged to the movement or
party of the day with which he himself had been so long associated.
And although his former personal associates and friends may not
have subjected him to abuse precisely on the ground that he
became a Catholic, nevertheless it does seem that at times he was
subjected to such abuse. One day a man by the name of Hoover,
from Charleston, S. C., was abusing Brownson to his publisher,
Rev. Benjamin H. Greene, as Brownson entered the book-store.
Greene said: “There is Mr. Brownson now, talk to him.” Hoover
thereupon turned to Brownson and violently abused him for
becoming a Catholic. Brownson interrupted him, saying: “Another
117

' I
118

i
I
t

1

4
I

J

■»
J

■l

THE AMERICAN ECCLESIASTICAL REVIEW

word, and I will throw you over that stove-pipe.” As the man
defiantly went on, Brownson took hold of his coat-collar with one
hand and the seat of his trousers with the other and pitched him
over the pipe, which ran from a stove in the front part of the
shop to the wall in the rear. The stricter the interpretation
Brownson gave to the dogma Extra ecclesiam nulla solus, the more
plain he was making it to those outside the pale of the Church
that as far as he himself was concerned he had no choice in be­
coming a Catholic.
However much one might discount these reasons in the case,
certain other reasons there are which most assuredly did in­
fluence Brownson to give to the Church’s claim of exclusive
salvation a strict construction. Because these reasons have been
overlooked, a great deal of confusion and misunderstanding
seems to have existed in many minds—those of biographers and
contributors to periodical literature—concerning Brownson’s
interpretation of the dogma Extra ecclesiam nulla salus. But this
confusion and misunderstanding need not have existed if Brown­
son had been read chronologically on this theological theme. No
one will ever rightly understand Brownson’s interpretation of
this dogma who has not first read carefully his article “Recent
Publications” with its illuminating introductory remarks on
what was to follow so soon. That article is the real key to his
whole subsequent formal treatment of this doctrinal matter.
This particular article appeared in the April, 1847, issue of his
Quarterly Renew, and was the harbinger of his first ex professo
treatise on the dogma which appeared in the very next number,
the October issue of the same year, under the caption “The Great
Question.” Although he recurs briefly time and again throughout
his writings to this dogma—it seems to have become a sore­
point with him inasmuch as he had been badly badgered because
of the stand he had taken—his other main discussions of this
solemn definition of the Church occur in the articles : “Civil and
; Religious Toleration,” "Extra Ecclesiam nulla Salus,” and his
rejoinder to his critics of the last article. Briefly stated, the doc­
trine he uniformly set forth and defended in this matter—except
perhaps for an obiter dictum or two which escaped him during his
brief liberalistic period—was that in order to be saved one must
be in re nd in nolo a member of the body of the Church.
In the article Recent Publications’ ’ Brownson deeply deplored

BROWNSON ON SALVATION AND THE CHURCH

i,
f
f
j
ί
I
1
i
i
i

119

the increasing tendency among authors of the current Catholic
popular literature to soften or explain away the qualifications
and restrictions which theologians attach to this dogma. (This
sort of literature seems to have reached its culmination in our
day in A. J. Cronin’s Keys of the Kingdom?) Such a tendency was
only aiding and abetting a fatal latitudinarianism already so
rampant and widespread. Against this tendency in popular
literature Brownson entered his vigorous protest. Such brief and
loose explanations as generally appear in novels, periodicals,
newspapers, and even some manuals, he said, and which from
these are caught up hastily by careless, half-educated, and un­
reflecting readers, already under the influence of a wide latitu­
dinarianism, are sure to be given a latitudinarian turn or twist
in such wise as to become false in doctrine and harmful in effect.
He asserted not only that he himself had been led so to understand those qualifications of theologians when yet a Protestant,
but also that although he had never doubted, after the age of
twenty, that if our Lord had established any Church at all, it
was the Roman Catholic Church, he had been repelled for years—■
he was forty one years of age when he became a Catholic—from
investigating the claims of that Church by finding Catholics
apparently conceding that it was not necessary for Protestants
to become united to the Church in order to be saved. Concerning
the qualifications of theologians touching this dogma and the
popular mind, he said :

f

Theologians may restrict the language of the dogma, they may qualify
its apparent sense, and their qualifications, as they themselves understand them, and as they stand in their scientific treatises for theological
students, may be just and detract nothing from faith; but any qualifications or explanations made in popular works, as the general reader
will understand them, especially when the tendency is to latitudin­
arianism, will be virtually against faith ; because he does not and
cannot take them in the sense of the theologians, and with the distinctions and restrictions with which they always accompany them in
their own minds. We never yet heard a layman contend for what he
supposed to be the theological qualification of this article of faith,
without contending for what is, in fact, contra fidem.1

!
t

To Brownson’s mind, then, the paramount question was: how
head off and roll back this rising tide of latitudinarianism? The

%

ί
t.

i
i

I'-

'Bratensm's Works (1884), XIX, 173.

/, “ -7‘-··

?.·ϊ

>

I

]

120

THE AMERICAN ECCLESIASTICAL REVIEW

;?··.·
■
only answer he could find was to stress the strict construction ot
.«
;
1
the Extra ecclesiam... .To this he was already inclined on other
f
grounds. He had learned his lesson well about liberal theology
J
before he ever became a Catholic. In the proclamation of this
■
solemn definition of the Church, therefore, writing in the capacity
<■■■;·
of a magazine editor, he took a practical rather than a theoret;
ical course in the matter. Dogmatic distinctions he considered
1
i
largely out of place. They could do no good, and might do much
J
harm. With him, rightly or wrongly, it was all a matter of polem. >s
ical policy. In other portions of his writings he speaks of telling
the truth in such a manner as to have all the effects of a lie. Such,
i
he feared, would have been the effect of any but a bold and undistinguished promulgation of the dogma Extra ecclesiam nulla
j
solus. He was greatly fearful of giving false hopes to those out<v-'tri
j
side the pale of the Church, and thought there was always less
;J
to be apprehended from saying anything that might offend them
than from failing to arrest their attention and engage them
’
earnestly in the work of investigation. If we wish to convert those
outside the Church, he said, “We must preach in all its rigor the
naked dogma. Give then the slightest peg, or what appears so,
;.j
not to you, but to them—the slightest peg, on which to hang a
.
hope of salvation without being in or actually reconciled to the
■'i.;Church by the Sacrament of Penance—and all the arguments you
■
address to them on the necessity of being in the Church in order to
;î
be saved, will have no more effect on them than rain on a duck’s
4
back.’’* When speaking of his own conversion he asserted that
s
had he found in Bishop J. B. Fenwick of Boston any but an
., ?
;
intransigent attitude in regard to the Church’s claim of exclusive
salvation when he went to interview him about joining the Church
'
—had Bishop Fenwick shown the least disposition to soften, to
i
conceal or explain away what seemed to him the severity of
Catholic doctrine—I should have distrusted the sincerity of his
faith, have failed to give him my confidence, and have lost what
I had in his Church.”’
Perhaps the most popular theory resorted to by the latitudinarians to explain away the necessity of being a member of the
. J
Church in some real sense was the theory which seemed to
guarantee salvation by asserting the suffiency of belonging to the
I

à

• '■ J

’ Ibid., XX, 412.

» Ibid., XIV, 475.

BROWNSON ON SALVATION AND THE CHURCH

121

j‘

rc :

:

so-called soul of the Church though an alien to the body. As
Fr. J. C. Fenton has explained, this theory crept into Catholic
thought and literature and gained a considerable currency through
the misinterpretation and misapplication on the part of certain
eighteenth century theologians of the terms body and soul of the
Church as used by St. Robert Bellermine in his treatise De ecclesia
militante, but which he himself had used merely as metaphors in
elucidating various portions of his teaching on the nature or
component parts of the Church.4 But Brownson was not to be
misled by such a specious theory. The body and soul of theChurch,
he affirmed, like the body and soul of man are distinguishable
but not separable.
The Church is not a disembodied spirit, nor a corpse. She is the
Church, the living Church, only by the mutual commerce of soul and
body. Their separation is the death of the Church just as much as the
separation of man’s soul and body is his. Communion with the body
alone, on the one hand, will not suffice, and, on the other, to suppose
that communion out of the body and independent of it is to fall into
pure spiritualism, or simple Quakerism, which tapers out into tran­
scendentalism or mere sentimentalism. Either extreme is the death of
the Church, which is always to be regarded as at once and indis­
solubly soul and body.5

Later on he was to write the acute sentence: “There can be no
more fatal mistake than to soften, liberalize, or latitudinize this
terrible dogma. Out of the Church there is no salvation, or to
give a man an opportunity’to persuade himself that he belongs to
the soul of the Church, though an alien to the body.”5
Brownson hit out vigorously at the fiction of an invisible Church
which Protestants fell back on when pressed for an explanation
ofwherethen was the Church before Luther and Calvin appeared.
“The Church,” he asserted, “which Catholics believe is a visible
kingdom, as much so as the kingdom of France or Great Britain,
and, when faith assures us that out of the Church there is no
salvation, the plain, obvious, natural sense is, that those living
and dying out of that visible kingdom cannot be saved.”7 To
yield the necessity of membership in the visible Church in order
to be saved would be, he said, to leave "the dogma of faith no
* cf. The American Ecclesiastical Review, CIX, I (Jan., 1944), 48-57.
• Works, V, 570.
‘ Ibid., XX, 414.
? Ibid., XIX, 173.

[
;
*
?
i
:

U
!..
*
\
· ;; ,
p
j;,

.

<;·

p
i.
v

iliMn iMtf ifflMiMillI

122

THE AMERICAN ECCLESIASTICAL REVIEW

meaning which even a Socinian or a trancendentalist has any
urgent occasion to reject.”8 And he cited the fact that St. Robert
Bellarmine holds, as do most theologians, on the authority of
St. Ambrose, that catechumens, dying before receiving the visible
sacrament of baptism in re, may be saved ; but that St. Robert
Bellermine still felt a difficulty in the case, and “labored hard” to
prove that “catechumens are after all, in the Church, not ac­
tually and properly, but only potentially, as a man conceived,
but not yet formed and bom, is called man potentially.” And be
further cited St. Augustine and Billuart to underscore the point
that these theologians understood clearly that if they were to
count as saved catechumens who die before actually receiving
the sacrament of baptism, they were under the obligation to
prove that they were members in some real sense, cel re, vd vote,
of the body of the Church.”
Brownson’s contention about the inadequacy of belonging
merely to the so-called soul of the Church, or of belonging to
some sort of an invisible Church or society, has been recently
sustained by the Encyclical Mystici corporis of our reigning
Pontiff, Pope Pius XII. “We deplore and condemn,” he said, "the
pernicious error of those who conjure up from their fancies an
imaginary Church, a kind of a society which finds its origin and
growth in charity, to which they somewhat contemptuously
opppose another, which they call juridical. But this distinction,
which they introduce is baseless.” Brownson’s contention on this
head seems to have been previously sustained likewise by the
Canon Law of the Church, Canon 87, which speaks of baptism of
water alone as incorporating into the Church, of bestowing person­
ality in the kingdom of God, a personality which can be restricted
in reference to rights by impediments or censures as far as the bond
of ecclesiastical communion is concerned. The only' medium of
union with the soul of the Church, then, is through union with the
body.
But some Catholics were shocked, or affected to be shocked,
when they heard Brownson proclaiming to the non-Catholic
public directly and unequivocally that there is no salvation out
of the Catholic Church. They alleged that it was harsh, illiberal,
uncharitable to say so. And they proceeded to read the sturdy old

ue

BROWNSON ON SALVATION AND THE CHURCH

123

reviewer lectures on the wisdom of a studied effort at presenting
Catholic truth to the public in a more inoffensive mien. In this
matter they held up St. Francis de Sales as a model of sweetness
and light. To this, referring to his own conviction in the matter,
hesaid:
We are often reminded when we insist on this, that St. Francis de
Sales, whose labors restored over seventy thousand Protestants to the
Church, was wont to say that “more flies can be caught with honey than
vinegar." This is unquestionably true, but they who are familiar with
the saint’s works do not need to be told that in his own practice he gave
considerable latitude to the word honey. Certainly we ask for no more
severe and bold mode of presenting Catholic truth, or stronger or severer
language against Protestants, than he was in the habit of adopting. Even
the editor of his controversial works did not deem it advisable to publish
them without softening some of their expressions. In fact, much of the
honey of the saints generally, especially of such saints as St Athanasius,
St Hilary of Poitiers, and St. Jerome, would taste very much like
vinegar, we suspect, to some of our modem delicate palates.10

In the exposition of this particular dogma Brownson wrote
with an absolutely assured pen, because he had gone behind the
dogma to find the principle that underlies it. Every Catholic
dogma, he affirmed, is but the infallible expression of some great
underlying principle which it is the business of the cultivators of
the profounder theological science to find out and evaluate. The
principle underlying the dogma Extra ecclesiam nulla salus is the
great truth or principle that “the MAN Christ Jesus is the one
Mediator between God and men,” and that the Church is, as it
were, His visible continuation in society. St. Paul call it the “body
of Christ.” To be saved, then, if one is to be saved at all, one must
belong in a real sense to the body of the Church, in re, vel in volo.
To assert salvation through the disembodied spirit of the Church
would be meaningless, since the Holy Ghost did not become
incarnate, is not the one Mediator between and man, and would
leave the flesh assumed in the womb of the Virgin Mary by the
Word no office or representative in the economy of salvation.
There can be no exception to this or any other dogma of the
Church, for all the dogmas of the Church are Catholic, universal,
admit of no exception; an exception in regard to this dogma or
any other would negative or destroy Christianity as the theolo“ Ibid., V, 551n.

124

THE AMERICAN ECCLESIASTICAL REVIEW

gical order established by God. It was when following this line
of theological reasoning that he pointed up the little word omnino
which appears in the original definition of the Fourth Council of
the Lateran: “Una vero est fidelium universalis ecclesia, extra
quam nullus omnino salvatur.”11
Orestes Augustus Brownson never wasted any time in his day
fighting windmills or straw-men. He always attacked the enemy
that held the field or was moving on to the field. The latitudinarianism or religious indifferentism he found devouring men’s
souls in his day, and which is devouring them with a ten-fold
greater voracity in our own day, he attacked with every weapon
he could bring into play from his gigantic intellectual armory.
His was a most valiant fight for what he considered to be the
real significance of the Church’s claim of exclusive salvation,
because he could not bring himself to believe that it is a small
matter whether one belongs to the Church or not, whether one
gains or loses Heaven forever.
Thomas R. Ryan, C.PP.S.
New Cumberland, Pa.
a Cf. ibid., XX, 392 ff.

Union of State and Heresy
... The union of the State with a heresy or schism does not elevate,
illuminate, and direct it. Nay, it perverts and misdirects thé powers
and actions of society, and turns them against the truth and law of
God. The union of Protestantism with the State has produced two
centuries of unexampled persecution of the Catholic faith and Church;
and when the State ceased to persecute, it nevertheless kept up, hy
exclusion, disfranchisement, and unequal dealing, a harassing obstruc­
tion to the truth, and cruel spiritual privations against Catholics. To
deliver the civil powers from the dominion and perversion of a heresy
and a schism, and to restore them to a neutral impartiality, and to a
natural equity towards all religious bodies, is a policy evidently wise
and just.
—Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, in his Miscellanies (New York:
The Caholic Publication Society, 1877), p. 288.

UNIFORMITY IN THE FUNERAL RITE

[

Undoubtedly, much of our time as priests is spent in our own
church and in other churches for the purpose of joining with the
Church in her solemn prayers for the dead. If we do not officiate
ourselves as celebrant or as one of the sacred ministers, we at least
assist at the funeral service. In doing this, we at times have
noticed and it has often been remarked that there is a certain
lack of uniformity in the procedure of conducting this funeral rite,
especially in the Mass and Absolution.
The Church has done all in her power to bring about uniformity
in her liturgical services by furnishing us with her official instruc­
tions, which come to us in the form of rubrics and decrees. These
latter exist for no other purpose than to safeguard the integrity
of her liturgical offices and to produce uniformity. The binding­
force of rubrics and decrees is made clear in moral theology, and in
our day, Canon 2 of the Code says: “All liturgical laws heretofore
decreed for the celebration of Holy Mass, the recitation of the
Divine Office, the administration of the sacraments and sacramentals and other sacred functions, retain their forces, except in
so far as the Code explicitly corrects these laws.” If the observ­
ance of these directions were only a matter of counsel and not one
of precept, no one would need be disturbed if they were not ob­
served, and, if this were true, the manner of conducting our serv­
ices could be left to the choice of the one who conducts them. In
this case, perfect uniformity would be out of the question. But
when it is known that these matters demand strict obedience,
then we expect the things desired, namely, uniformity of the
highest order.
The words “custom” and “tradition” are found serviceable,
and are used too frequently to cover up many a mistake and omis­
sion in rubrics and ceremonies. Doing things the wrong way,
simply because they have been done that way over a long period
of time, does not sanctify a tradition or legitimize a custom. This
is more than a consistent statement. It is in line with the teach­
ings of the Church. In fact, it can be said that customs that are
contrary to the rubrics are to be rated as abuses. Some in self­
defense, resort to the old adage “Nihil innovetur nisi quod tra­
ditum est,” which according to many would mean that the old
procedure is sacred, because it is traditional and therefore must
125

L