THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD
It is a commonplace among modern theologians who deal
with the tractatus de ecclesia that this particular subject is treated
quite inadequately in most of the current manuals. Canon Jacques
Leclercq has voiced this complaint quite forcefully in his highly
interesting book, La vie du Christ dans son église. He begins his
study with the contention that

As we usually find it [the treatise on the Church] in the manuals,
it is a treatise mainly apologetical in character, but partly canonical
also. Its principal aim is to prove that Christ founded a visible society,
that this society is the Catholic Church, and that the Catholic Church
centers around the Pope. Then there follow studies about the powers
in the Church, and particularly about the powers of the Sovereign
Pontiff, and about the principles governing the relations between the
Church and the State. But there are many other things in the Church.1

Despite the fact that he over-simplifies his description of the
current treatise de ecclesia, Canon Leclercq is indubitably correct
in his contention that sacred theology has a great deal to say about
the Catholic Church which is not contained in the contemporary
manuals. Among other things, the contemporary text-books of
theology most frequently omit or understress the divine teaching
about the relations between the Church and the world. Strangely
enough, that doctrine formed an integral and highly important part
of early scholastic ecdesiology. From the thirteenth century until
the eighteenth, there was never any question of removing it from the
treatise on the Church of Christ. During the eighteenth century,
however, this section gradually disappeared from the manuals.
From the beginning of the nineteenth century down to our own
time, the theological manuals have contained only the barest mini­
mum of this teaching.
The omission or the understressing of this teaching has had a
definitely ascertainable cause in the history of sacred theology. It
has likewise had serious and highly unfortunate results. It will
be the purpose of this paper to sketch the basic teaching on the
interrelations of the Church and the world, the manner in which
this teaching is to be found in the most important early monu1 La vie du Christ dans son église (Paris : Les Éditions du Cerf, 1947), p. 5.

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203

ments of our scholastic ecclesiology, the causes of its decline in
scholastic literature, and the unfortunate results which have fol­
lowed upon that decline.
It is a truth of basic importance about the Catholic Church that,
since the days of our first parents, there have existed upon this
earth two distinct and mutually hostile organizations, the super­
natural kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan, the group
under the direction and the influence of “the prince of this world.”
This separation began only after the fall, when the family of
Adam began to exist and to act as a social unit averted from God,
its only ultimate and supernatural end. Original sin, it must be
remembered, not only turned the individual child of Adam away
from God, but also affected the family of Adam, as a social
entity.
God, in His infinite mercy, made it possible for men, from the
earliest days after the fall, to go out from this company which
lay under the dominion of His chief spiritual enemy, and to enter
into His own supernatural kingdom, the society which was to be
headed by His divine Son. Entrance or incorporation into this
new group was to be effected by a profession of faith in God,
by the acceptance of divine public revelation. The divinely re­
vealed message was chiefly concerned with the Messias, who was to
be the head of the new household of God for all eternity. Hence
the supernatural kingdom of God was, from the very outset, the
company of Jesus Christ Our Lord.
Within this society there existed and operated the sanctity of
Christ Himself. The Saints of the Old Testament acted with the
help of that divine grace which was given to them by reason of the
pre-applied merits of Christ Thus entrance into this group was
basically a step, and an essential step, in the salvation of man. The
people who were favored with membership in this company were
those who had been saved from the great company which lay under
the dominion of Satan.
Ultimately, of course, salvation consists in the achievement of
the beatific vision by one who had previously been in a position
of aversion from God. It involves a final and irremoveable inte­
gration into the company of Christ, membership in the Church
tnumphant, and consequently an absolute and eternal removal from
the evil of aversion from God.
This ultimate salvation begins from a proximate and real process

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of salvation on this earth, a process whereby a person who has
hitherto belonged merely to the family of Adam, and who has thus
been turned away from God and placed under the domination ol
Satan, enters into the household of God which is the supernatural
kingdom of Jesus Christ. The person who perseveres in this super­
natural kingdom of God until the end of this earthly life is the
only one who will achieve the ultimate and eternal salvation of the
beatific vision. Thus the supernatural kingdom of God on this
earth is and has been from the very outset the company of the
saved.
Now it is an integral part of Catholic teaching, despite the fact
that it has not been adequately stressed in many of the recent
theological manuals in their treatise de ecclesia, that this super­
natural kingdom of God, the congregation of the faithful in Christ,
has been in existence on this earth since the days of our first
parents themselves. Catholic doctrine teaches that the divinely re­
vealed message given to this supernatural kingdom was added to
from time to time during the ages that transpired between the
days of our first parents and the advent of Jesus Christ Our Lord.
It also holds that this message was completed in the divine doc­
trine which was preached by Our Lord and by His apostles.
Moreover, the internal structure of the kingdom itself under­
went many modifications during the course of its history. From
wholly unorganized beginnings, the kingdom eventually passed to
the status in which one particular ethnic group was constituted
as the chosen people. This politico-religious organization of the
Jews was established as the social unit out of which the Redeemer
of the world was to come. It was also the custodian of the divinely
commanded worship of the old dispensation. This people, over and
above all others, stood forth as the people of the ancient covenant,
despite the fact that it was perfectly possible for a man, prior to the
time of Christ’s advent, to belong to God’s supernatural kingdom
on earth without having any connection whatsoever with the Jewish
commonwealth.
The most important element in the meaning of the term “the
true Church of Jesus Christ” is to be found in the truth that the
existent and visible Catholic Church is, as it stands, the super­
natural kingdom of God on this earth today. Or, to put the same
truth in another way, the supernatural kingdom of Christ in its
final status on this earth is absolutely identified with the Catholic

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Church, Thus the visible Catholic Church is inherently and primari­
ly the company of the saved, the society with which men must be
associated if they are to enjoy the beatific vision. It is essentially
the household of God, the company of Christ, within which alone
men may find association with Our Lord on this earth.
And, by reason of the very fact that the Church is the king­
dom of God on earth, it is and it will ever be a society definitely
out of favor with the kingdom of “the prince of this world.” The
basic cause of opposition and persecution against the Church on
the part of the world is and has always been the clear and un­
equivocal statement by the Church of the divinely revealed truth
about itself and about its divine Founder. Ordinarily at least, if
Catholics are willing to represent themselves as belonging to the
world rather than to the unique kingdom of God on earth, the
world will be perfectly willing to accept them as its own.
It is only when the world encounters the accurate statement of the
divinely revealed message about the Church, the teaching that this
visible society is, by God’s ordinance, actually necessary for salva­
tion as the only divinely instituted and authorized religious society
on earth, that unpopularity and opposition are encountered. It is
the situation which Our Lord prophetically described on the night
of the Last Supper.

If the world hate you, know ye that it hath hated me before you.
If you had been of the world, the world would love its own; but
because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the
world, therefore the world hateth you.2

It is perfectly certain, then, that the social organism which leads
and will always lead the opposition against the Catholic Church
is the “world” itself. The supreme direction of the corporate efforts
made to counter the works of the Church belongs to “the prince
of this world.” Furthermore, it is of supreme importance to note
that the battle for God and His truth in the religious sphere is
and always will be waged by the Catholic Church itself, not by
some alliance of the Church with other agencies of “good will” in
this world.
The early 'scholastic ecclesiologists were quite explicit in their
teaching about the existence of an ecclesia Dei. and an ecclesia
2 John, 15:18-19.

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Satanae, which have co-existed and which have been in a status
of mutual conflict since the first days of the human race. They
were equally strong in their insistence that the visible Catholic
Church is actually the ecclesia Dei, the one and only company
of the saved, in the era of the New Testament. Moneta of Cremona,
a Dominican theologian of the thirteenth century, thus teaches the
doctrine of the two ecclesiae.
Two ecclesiae are found in this world, according to the testimony
of the Scriptures. One is the ecclesia sanctorum, about which we
read in the first verse of Psalm 149: “Sing ye to the Lord a new
canticle: let his praise be in the church of the saints.” The other is
the ecclesia malignantium, with reference to which we read that the
Holy Ghost has said, through David, in the fifth verse of Psalm 25:
“I have hated the assembly of the malignant”34
Moneta also brings out in all of its perfection the Catholic
teaching that the Church of the New Testament is actually the
continuation of the ecclesia sanctorum which had been in existence
since the days of our first parents.

It is the teaching of Catholic men that the Church can be considered
in two ways. In one way the Church is called the congregatio fidelium
in such a manner that the fidelis is so designated in terms of the faith
without any qualification whatsoever (simpliciter'). But this faith is
identical in the saints of long ago, who lived before the advent of
Christ into the world and in those who have believed in Christ since
His coming.... The times have changed, but the faith has not changed.
They believed that Christ was going to come. We believe that He has
come. When we consider the Church from this point of view, we are
compelled to say that the Church began with the first just man, that is,
with Abel. . . .*
Considered in its other aspect, the Church is called the congregatio
fidelium in - such a manner that the fidelis is thus designated, not in
terms of the faith without qualification, but from the faith of Christ
who has already been bom of the Virgin, who has already suffered,
etc. Considered in this way, the Church began from the coming of
Christ, even before the passion and the resurrection, because He gave
the Holy Ghost to the disciples even before the passion, as we show
in the chapter about the Holy Ghost in the second section of this work.
This is the Church which is now called Roman, the Church which began
3 Adversus Catharos et Valdenses (Rome, 1743), Lib. V, cap. 1, p. 389.
4 Ibid., Lib. V, cap. 2, p. 408.

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from Christ, whom Peter succeeded [as the visible head of the society]
and which will remain thus until the end of the world.5
The doctrine thus presented by Moneta is what modem manuals
teach all too succinctly in their allusions to two definitions of the
Church militant, the one applying to the kingdom of God, the
congregation of the faithful in Christ which has been in existence
since the time of our first parents, and the other applying to the
risible society of Our Lord’s disciples, organized during the course
of His public life on earth. Thus it has always been the teaching
of Catholic theology that the society of Our Lord’s disciples was
not formed as an entirely new thing. This organization was fash­
ioned to be what the kingdom of God on earth had always been,
the one company of the believers, the association or brotherhood
into which a man had to enter in order to be saved from the
kingdom of Satan. The organization which Our Lord built around
Himself is not merely the continuation of the old Israel, the
assembly of the covenant, but it is the continuation and the final
status on earth of God’s militant kingdom.
For the older scholastic ecclesiologists, the immediate source of
the teaching about the distinction between the Church and the
world as between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan
was the doctrine of St Augustine, particularly that set forth in his
De civitate Dei. The Augustinian Bishop of Benevento, James of
Viterbo, in the beginning of the fourteenth century, brought this
doctrine out in his treatise De regimine Christiano. He begins by
observing that the Church on earth and the Church triumphant in
heaven do not constitute two societies, but actually form one and
the same kingdom of God.

These are not two kingdoms, but one kingdom, because there is
one King over both, namely Christ who rules both, although in a
different manner. For he reigns in the ecclesia viatorum through
faith, and in the ecclesia beatorum through open vision. This king­
dom is one by reason of the unity of its purpose and of its principle,
although it is divided by reason of a diversity of condition. ..
The kingdom of the world, which is called earthly, is opposed to the
kingdom of God, because it has chosen earthly goods for itself as its
own purpose. This is also called the kingdom of the devil, because the
s/Hd, p. 409.

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devil rules over it, for, as it is said in the book of Job, “He is king
over all the children of pride,” because through malice he rules over
them, as Christ rules over the just through grace. . . But these two
kingdoms, as far as men'are concerned, are mingled together, in this
life, because the good are mingled together with the evil and the
evil with the good. Both in like manner use temporal things and both
together are afflicted equally with misfortunes until they shall be
separated by the last judgment when each will receive his final end, as
Augustine says in the eighteenth book of the De civitate Dei.e

J»
i®

James of Viterbo is quite explicit in his teaching that the two
kingdoms have been in existence since the time of our first parents.
He also insists that every person in the world belongsto one or the
other of these two companies.
, .

These two kingdoms originated from and were typified by Abel
and Cain, and also the two sons of Abraham. There always have been
men belonging to both kingdoms since the very beginning of the human
race. Moreover the entire human race is contained within these two
kingdoms, in such a way that each person must belong to one or the
other of them.7

ί

Thé fifteenth-century Carmelite theologian, Thomas Netter of
Walden, is neither as clear nor as completely accurate as Moneta
of Cremona ànd James of Viterbo in his explanation of the exis­
tence of God’s kingdom on earth prior to the Incarnation.’Netter
wrote to refute the heretical teachings of John Wycliffe, an English
priest who defined thé Church as the company (universitas) oi the
predestined. Like many another controversialist, Netter weakened
his own position somewhat by his anxiety to use the terminology
and even the concepts of his adversary in his own presentation of
the Christian message.
Netter admitted that there is “a certain kind of Church of all
the elect.” 8 He believed that this was the society which St. Augus­
tine described frequently in the course of his works. The passage
which he cites, however, is the one from the De civitate Dei in
® Pars I, cap. 1, in Le plus ancien traité de l’église, Jacques de Viterbe, De
regimine Christiano. Étude des sources et édition critique, par H. X. Arquülière (Paris: Beauchesne, 1926), pp. 96 ff.
7 Ibid., pp. 98 f.
s Antiquitatum fidei catholicae ecclesiae doctrinale de sacramentis (Venice,
1758), Lib. II, cap. 10, p. 286.

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which St. Augustine states that “The Church goes on in pilgrimage,
amidst the world’s persecutions and God’s consolations, not merely
from the time of the bodily presence of Christ and of the apostles,
but from Abel, the first just man, whom his impious brother killed,
and [it goes on] thence to the very end of the world.” 9 Later in
this same work, Netter presented his theory that this “Church of
the predestined” is contained within the visible Church “as a wheel
within a wheel.”10 The visible Church is the society of the bap­
tized, the congregation which includes both good and evil members
in this world. It is the reality which Our Lord described in the
parable of the great net.11
Thomas Netter of Walden, writing against the Wycliffites, cen­
tered his attention on the Church militant of the New Testament.
The teaching he tried to explain in terms of a twofold Church
was exactly the same doctrine which the other scholastic ecclesiologists brought out with their twofold definition of the same society.
Another great fifteenth-century theologian, the Dominican Car­
dinal John de Turrecremata, wrote what is still by all means the
best doctrinal explanation oi the origin and the nature of Our
Lord’s Church. In his Summa de ecclesia, a masterpiece which has
never been utilized in the history of scholastic theology to the
extent it deserves to be, Turrecremata gives a magnificently com­
plete and accurate teaching about the twofold origin of the Christian
Church. He explains its beginnings as the society of the disciples,
organized around Himself by Jesus Christ Our Lord, and then he
shows how this society is actually the final status in this world of a
company of believers in Christ which started from Abel. In turn­
ing back the objections of those who held that the ecclesia sanc­
torum began from Adam rather than from Abel, Turrecremata
insisted that opposition to the kingdom of Satan was of the veiy
nature of Christ’s company in this world, and that such opposition
was first manifest in the persecution and murder of Abel by Cain.12
This same concept of the Church of Christ as opposed through­
out its entire history by the world, considered as the kingdom of
Satan, is manifest in the works of the great counter-Reformation
9 The citation is from Book XVIII, cap. 51.
10 Netter, op. cit., Lib. II, cap. 12, p. 299.
KIbid.
12 Summa de ecclesia (Venice, 1561), Lib. I, cap. 27, p. 30r.

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theologians. Invariably it carried with it an account of the origin
of God’s supernatural kingdom on earth in the days of our first
parents. It was still current in scholastic theology in the early
days of the eighteenth century, and it forms an integral part of
Tournely’s ecclesiology.
That teaching, however, has no longer been stressed since the
middle of the last century. Its disappearance from Catholic theology
can be explained, in part at least, by an unfortunate tendency to
divide the treatise de ecclesia into two sections, the one “apologet­
ical” and the other “theological.” The nineteenth-century ecclesiologists considered it their duty to refute the main contention, of
liberal Protestantism, the erroneous teaching that Our Lord had
never organized any religious society of His own. Unfortunately,
however, they seem to have imagined that this preoccupation en­
titled them to leave out of their teaching on the foundation of the
Church all that was not immediately requisite for this refutation.
Hence the pre-existence of the Christian Church as God’s super­
natural kingdom on earth prior to the Incarnation, and the nature
of the Catholic Church as this kingdom in its final and definitive
state on this earth have been somewhat neglected in the popular
ecclesiology of recent times.
The manoeuvre itself was quite unscientific. There is no reason
whatsoever why any one section of ecclesiology should be desig­
nated as “apologetical” and cut off from what is called the “theo­
logical” portion of the treatise. It is perfectly true, of course, that
there is ample historical as distinguished from specifically revealed
evidence for the establishment of the Catholic Church by Jesus
Christ Our Lord. This evidence with the conclusion to which it
leads does not, however, in any way constitute the entire theo­
logical teaching about the origin and the basic nature of the
Church.
The brotherhood of Catholics with the Saints of the Old Testa­
ment forms an integral part of the divinely revealed message about
the Church. That fellowship can only be explained in terms of
common membership in one company of believers, within which
the faith itself remained one since the days of our first parents.
The opposition of the world to the Church is a fact attested by
Our Lord Himself. That opposition can only be understood ade­
quately when it is known that the visible Church militant of the
New Testament is. actually God’s supernatural kingdom on earth,

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211

a company which has been in existence, and which has been
opposed by the kingdom of Satan, since the earliest days of the
human race.
When the complete theology of the Church’s origin is rightly
explained, the necessity of the Church for salvation is more
perfectly understandable. The kingdom of God, opposed by the
kingdom of this world, has always been and is of its very essence,
the society of salvation. Men are saved from the company of
Satan primarily by entrance into this supernatural kingdom. It is
interesting to note that the confusion which has characterized
some of the teaching on this thesis has appeared in theological
literature only since the theology of the Church’s origin has been
presented in inadequate form.
The most important effect of this inadequacy in teaching about
the origin of the Church and about the Church and the world has
been the emergence of a kind of mitigated indifferentism. Those
who forget that the Church is essentially God’s kingdom on earth,
ever striving for its supernatural objective against the hostile
efforts of the world itself, have been prone to imagine that the
visible Catholic society to some extent shares its functions with
other organizations. They have formulated the concept of a vast
struggle for God’s service on earth, a struggle in which the army
working for God consists of the Church and other organizations
of “men of good will.” They do not grasp the central mystery of
God’s teaching about the Church, the truth that this visible society,
with its good and evil members mingled together during all the days
of its earthly sojourn, is actually the kingdom which alone does
God’s will in the religious order. This, and this alone, is the com­
pany of Christ.
Canon Ledercq’s somewhat summary description of the treatise
de ecclesia, as this treatise stands in a good many modem manuals
of sacred theology, takes no cognizance whatsoever of the divine
teaching about the identity of the Church as God’s kingdom on
earth and about the relations of that supernatural kingdom with
“the prince of this world” and the group subject to his influence.
It is unfortunately all too probable that the impression many other
theologians have formed of this treatise corresponds more or less
exactly to that of the distinguished Belgian writer. If this be so,
it is essential that the treatise should be enriched, so as to en-

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compass within it an adequate teaching of the divinely revealed
truth about the Church.
This enrichment of scholastic ecclesiology demands, first of all,
an inclusion of certain teachings about the life of the Church
which, although existent in theological literature, have not as yet
been brought into the ordinary treatise de ecclesia. As examples of
such teachings we may mention the theology of the local Church or
diocese, and the theology of the place of religious congregations in
the Church.
It is fully as important, however, that there should also be a
reconsideration of that part of ecclesiology which is now termed
merely or principally apologetical in nature. It is highly important
that theologians should remember that, on the origin of the Church
and on its discemibility, there is not merely a body of strictly
historical evidence, but also a tremendous amount of specifically
supernatural teaching. A man definitely does not understand all
that God wills he should know about the origin of the Catholic
Church if he is simply aware of the historical evidence “that Christ
founded a visible society,” and “that this society is the Catholic
Church.” He does not grasp all that God wills that he should know
about the unity of the Church if he considers this unity merely
as a visible note.
The historical evidence now set forth in the “apologetical” sec­
tion of the treatise de ecclesia rightly belongs in this treatise. But,
if the treatise is to be treated adequately, the evidence of divine
revelation itself, the strictly theological evidence about the origin,
the unity, and the character of the Catholic Church must be in­
cluded also. That section of the treatise now commonly designated
as apologetical is no more repertory of facile responses to non­
Catholic arguments and jibes against the Church of Christ. Proper
ly speaking, it is and it ought to be the fundamental part of the
scholastic explanation of God’s teaching about His supernatural
kingdom on earth.
It is well to remember that, although scholastic theology itself
has somewhat understressed the teaching about the Church and
the world, that doctrine has been stated with the utmost clarity
in a highly important pontifical document. On April 20, 1884,
Pope Leo XIII issued his famous encyclical letter, Humanum
genus. This encyclical condemned the powerful organization of
the Freemasons precisely because, in the opinion of Pope Leo, this

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group had come to act as the central and directive force in the
campaign of the kingdom of Satan against Our Lord and against
the supernatural kingdom of God on earth.
At this period, however, the partisans of evil seem to be combining
together, and to be struggling with united vehemence, led on or assisted
by that strongly organized and widespread association called the Free­
masons. No longer making any secret of their purposes, they are now
boldly rising up against God Himself. They are planning the destruc­
tion of the holy Church publicly and openly, and this with the set
purpose of despoiling the nations of Christendom, if it Were possible,
of the blessings obtained for us through Jesus Christ Our Saviour.13
Pope Leo’s accusations against Freemasonry are understandable
only in the light of the Catholic teaching on the Church and the
world, seen together with the doctrine on the origin of God’s
kingdom on earth during the lifetime of our first parents. Hence the
encyclical itself opens with a vigorous statement of this truth.

The race of man, after its miserable fall from God, the Creator and
the Giver of heavenly gifts, “through the envy of the devil,” separated
into two diverse and opposite parts, of which the one steadfastly con­
tends for truth and virtue, the other for those things which are contrary
to virtue and to truth. The one is the kingdom of God on earth, the
true Church of Jesus Christ; and those who desire from their heart
to be united with it so as to gain salvation must of necessity serve
God and His only-begotten Son with their whole mind and with an
entire will. The other is the kingdom of Satan, in whose possession
and control are all whosoever follow the fatal example of their leader
and of our first parents, those who refuse to obey the divine and
eternal law, and who have many aims of their own in contempt of
God, and many aims also against God.
This twofold kingdom St. Augustine keenly discerned and described
after the manner of two cities, contrary in their laws because striving
for contrary objects; and with subtle brevity he expressed the efficient
cause of each in these words : “Two loves formed two cities : the love
of self, reaching even to contempt of God, an earthly city; and the
love of God, reaching even to contempt of self, a heavenly one.” At
every period of time each has been in conflict with the other, with a
variety and multiplicity of weapons and of warfare, although not
always with equal ardor and assault.14
uThe Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII (New York: Benziger
Brothers, 1908), pp. 83 f.
™IHd., p. 83.

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We are, all of us, firmly convinced that the theology of our
time will be gloriously enriched by the inclusion in the manuals
of the doctrinal treasures resident in the great papal encyclicals.
Unfortunately, however, when there is mention of the encyclicals
in our time, there is a widespread tendency to think merely or at
least primarily of the great social documents, like the Rerum
novarum and the Quadrigesimo anno. Actually that tendency has
done a great deal of harm to modern Catholic instruction. It is
perfectly true that the men for whom Christ died need, and need
badly, the social teachings of the Catholic Church. It is also true
that our people and our priests must have the treasures of dogmatic
truth, contained in encyclicals like the Humanum genus “the singu­
lari quadum, and the Mystici corporis. Only when these docu­
ments are used more fully, and only when their content is brought
into the theological manuals, will we find the type of adequate
theological teaching on the Church about which Canon Leclercq
has written and towards which he has contributed so effectively.

Μ

Joseph Clifford Fenton

I
I
Μ

The Catholic University of America
Washington, D. C.

J
Adapting the Catholic Message

The principles on which the new opinions We have mentioned
are based may be reduced to this: that, in order the more easily to
bring· over to Catholic doctrine those who dissent from it, the Church
ought to adapt herself somewhat to our advanced civilization, and,
relaxing her ancient rigor, show some indulgence to modern popular
theories and methods. Many think that this is to be understood not
only with regard to the rule of life, but also to the doctrines in which
the deposit of faith is contained. For they contend that it is opportune,
in order to work in. a more attractive way upon the wills of those who
are not in accord with us, to pass over certain heads of doctrines, as
if of lesser moment, or so to soften them that they may not have the
same meaning which the Church has invariably held. Now, Beloved
Son, few words are needed to show how reprehensible is the plan that
is thus conceived, if we but consider the character and origin of the
doctrine which the Church hands down to us.
-—Pope Leo ΧΙΠ, in his encyclical Testem benevolentiae, issued on
Jan. 22, 18». In The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII Qfar
York: Benziger Brothers, 1903), p. 442.

■Mtoiimw,

Answers to Questions
A RECENT DECREE OF THE HOLY OFFICE
■

Question: What decree did the Holy See recently issue in
reference to "interfaith” meetings? What bearings will this decree
have on conditions prevailing in our country?

if

Answer: The questioner evidently refers to a monitum issued
by the Holy Office on June 5, 1948, the translation of which is as
follows:

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Since it has been found out that in various places, against the pre­
scriptions of the Sacred Canons and without previous permission of
the Holy See, mixed gatherings of non-Catholics with Catholics have
been held, in which matters of faith have been discussed, all are re­
minded that it is forbidden by Canon 1325, S3, for both lay persons
and clerics, whether secular or religious, to take part in these gather­
ings without the aforesaid permission. Much less is it permitted for
Catholics to convoke and establish such gatherings. Hence, let the
Ordinaries insist that these prescriptions be exactly observed by all.
There is still more reason for observing these rulings when there
is question of what are called “ecumenical” gatherings, in which Cath­
olics, whether lay persons or clerics, may under no circumstances take
part without the previous consent of the Holy See.
Since however, both in the aforesaid gatherings and outside of them,
even acts of mixed cult have not infrequently been performed, all are
again admonished that any communication in sacred rites is absolutely
forbidden, according to the norm of Canons 1258 and 731,52.
Given at Rome, from the Holy Office, June 5, 1948.
Peter Vigorita, Notary
(Osservatore Romano, June 6, 1948)
This decree contains nothing that is strictly new; it merely re­
peats very emphatically certain prescriptions already laid down by
the Code in the canons cited. However, this present decree makes
explicit mention of a point which is contained only in a general
way in the code—namely, that clerics as well as lay Catholics
are forbidden to take part in religious dicussions and con­
ferences with non-Catholics unless they obtain due permission.
Furthermore, this monitum speaks of the Holy See alone as the
competent authority to grant this permission. It is true, Canon

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