Ube Mmerican Ecclesiastical TRcview A MONTHLY PUBLICATION FOR THE CLERGY twin Approbation* Snptriorwn VOL. CXX JANUARY—JUNE, 1949 Έρ bl πνά'ματι, μι$ ψυχή συναβλοΰντκ τη χίστ« του «ύαγγβλίου Phil. 1 -27 Publwhed by THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA PRESS 1θ6 336 THE AMERICAN ECCLESIASTICAL REVIEW is in essence, one action, whose unique purpose is to join a created human nature to the Second Person of the Trinity, so as to form Christ, the God-man. The human nature of Christ, complete ia all essentials, is nonetheless the effect of an entirely different crea­ tive act on the part of God. While not prior in time to the unitive action of the Incarnation, still in the natural order, the humanity is conceived as existing prior to its union with the Word. Only in one respect does the human nature of Christ depart from the common run of other mortals. His human nature was deprived of that created addition which we call the substantial mode of per­ sonality. In place of this it received a supernatural modification— the substantial mode of union, whereby the human nature of Christ was united to the Word of God, and found the termination of its existence in the Divine Person of the Word. Whether we agree or not with his conclusions, to dismiss the opinion of Francis Suarez lightly as hardly worth an investigation, would be a serious error indeed. Clearly, in the course of this truncated exposition, it has been impossible to convey more than a hint of the overwhelming mass of erudition, the scholarly accu­ racy, the rapier-like logic, which was ever at the command of this brilliant theologian. At the conclusion of the two mighty tones, De Incarnatione, Suarez, in a rare personal touch, penned the motive which he kept before his eyes :— Before all I can affirm, as I shall always affirm, that my one ambition, which I have endeavored to realize without flinching in the face of any labor or effort, has always been to know and to make known the truth and nothing but the truth. A partisan spirit has never inspired, and never will inspire, any of my opinions. I have never sought anything more than the truth, and I desire that those who read my books should seek it in their turn.8 No mean ideal this, and one which every aspirant to scholarship in the sacred sciences may ponder and strive to emulate. Woodstock College Samuel R. Wiley, S.J. Woodstock, Md. EPISCOPAL JURISDICTION AND THE ROMAN SEE One of the most important contributions to sacred theology in recent years is to be found in the Holy Father’s teaching about the immediate source of episcopal jurisdiction within the Catholic Church. In his great encyclical letter Mystici corporis, issued June 29, 1943, Pope Pius XII spoke of the ordinary power of jurisdiction of the other Catholic bishops as something "bestowed upon them immediately” by the Sovereign Pontiff.1 More than a year before the publication of the Mystici corporis the Holy Father brought out the same truth in his pastoral allocution to the parish priests and the Lenten preachers of Rome. In this address he taught that the Vicar of Christ on earth is the one from whom all the other pastors in the Catholic Church “receive immediately their jurisdiction and their mission.” 2 In the latest edition of his classic work, Institutiones iuris publici ecclesiastici, Msgr. Alfredo Ottaviani declares that this teaching, which was previously considered as probabilior or even as com­ munis, must now be held as entirely certain by reason of what Pope Pius XII has said.3 The thesis which must be accepted and taught as certain is an extremely valuable element in the Christian teaching about the nature of the true Church. Denial or even neglect of this thesis will inevitably prevent anything like an accurate and adequate theological understanding of Our Lord’s function as the Head of the Church and of the visible unity of the kingdom of God on earth. Thus, in giving this doctrine the status of a definitely certain statement, the Holy Father has greatly benefited the work of sacred theology. The thesis that bishops derive their power of jurisdiction im­ mediately from the Sovereign Pontiff is by no means a new teach­ ing. In his Brief Super soliditate, issued, Nov. 28, 1786, and directed against the teachings of the canonist Joseph Valentine Eybel, Pope Pius VI bitterly censured Eybel for that writer’s in­ solent attacks on the men who taught that the Roman Pontiff is 8 Ibid., 2nd ed, preface. Mission Intention . The Mission Intention for the month of April, 1949, is for “The Missions in Burma and Ceylon.” ;·.Ή; 3·· ' 1 1 Cf. the NCWC edition, n. 42. 2C£ Osservatore Romano, Feb. 18, 1942. 3 Cf. Institutiones iuris publici ecclesiastici, 3rd edition (Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1948), I, 413. 337 338 THE AMERICAN ECCLESIASTICAL REVIEW the one “from whom the bishops themselves derive their authority.”1 Pope Leo XIII, in his encyclical Satis cognitum, dated June 29, 1896, brought out a fundamental point in this teaching when he restated, with reference to those powers which the other rulers of the Church hold in common with St. Peter, the teaching of Pope St. Leo I that whatever God had given to these others He had given through the Prince of the Apostles.® That teaching had been enunciated explicitly in a communication of the Roman Church by Pope St. Innocent I, in his letter to the African bishops, issued Jan. 27, 417. This great Pontiff stated that “the episcopate itself and all the power of this name” come from St. Peter.® The doctrine propounded by Pope St. Innocent I was quite familiar to the African hierarchy. It had been developed and taught by the predecessors of the men to whom he wrote, in the first systematic and extensive explanation of the episcopacy within the Catholic Church. Towards the middle of the third century St. Cyprian, the Martyr-Bishop of Carthage, had elabor­ ated his teaching on the function of St. Peter and of his cathedra as the basis of the Church’s unity.7 St. Optatus, the Bishop of Milevis and an outstanding defender of the Church against the attacks of the Donatists had written, around the year 370, that Peter’s cathedra was the one See in which “unity is to be main­ tained by all,” 8 and that, after his fall, Peter had “alone received the keys of the kingdom of heaven, which were to be handed ονσ also (communicandas) to the others.” 9 During the last years of the fourth century Pope St. Siricius had asserted the Petrine origin of the episcopate in his letter, Cum « unum, when he designated the Prince of the Apostles as the one “From whom both the apostolate and the episcopate in Christ de«Cf. DB, 1500. 5Cf. Codicis iuris canonici fontes, edited by Cardinal Pietro Gaspam (Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1933), III, 489 f. The statement of Pope St. Leo I is to be found in his fourth sermon, that on the second anniversary of his elevation to the papal office. ®DR, 100. 7 Cf. Adhemar D’Alès, La théologie de Saint CyPrien (Paris: Beauchesne, 1922), pp. 130 ff. 8 Cf. Libri sex contra Parmenianum Donatistam, II, 2. « CL ibid., VII, 3.