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Superior General's Letters
  
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Chapter II

THE DOCTRINAL PROBLEMS POSED BY
THE ECUMENISM 63


17. The ecumenical practice of this Pontificate is entirely established upon the distinction between the Church of Christ and the Catholic Church. This division permits to assert that if the visible communion has been injured by ecclesiastical divisions, the communion of saints, considered as the sharing of spiritual goods in a common union with Christ, has not been broken. Yet this affirmation does not correspond to the Catholic faith.

The Church of Christ is the Catholic Church

18. One cannot distinguish the Church of Christ from the Catholic Church as this ecumenical practice presupposes. By the very fact that the Church is considered as an interior reality, this “Church, Body of Christ”, really distinct from the Catholic Church, rejoins the protestant notion of a “Church invisible to us, visible only to the eyes of God”.64 This notion is contrary to the invariable teaching of the Church. For example, Leo XIII, speaking of the Church, affirms: “It is because [the Church] is a body that she is visible to our eyes.”65 Pius XI does not say anything different: “Christ Our Lord, has established His Church as a perfect society, exterior by nature and perceptible to the senses.”66 Pius XII thus concludes: “It is to depart from the divine truth to imagine one Church which cannot be seen nor touched, which would be only ‘spiritual’ (pneumaticum), into which the numerous Christian communities, even though separated by the faith, could nonetheless be reunited by an invisible bond.”67

19. The Catholic faith thus obliges to affirm the identity of the Church of Christ and the Catholic Church. Pius XII thus identifies “the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ” to “this veritable Church of Jesus Christ – Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman”.68 Before Pius XII, the Magisterium had affirmed: “There is no other Church but that which built upon Peter alone, in one body joined and convoked together [‘visible’ understood], rising up in the unity of the faith and charity.”69 Lastly, let us call to mind the exclamation of Pius IX: “There is only one true and holy religion, founded and instituted by Christ, Our Lord. Mother and nurse of virtue, destroyer of vice, liberator of souls, guide of true happiness; she is called: Catholic, Apostolic, Roman.”70 Following a constant and universal magisterium, the first preparatory schema of Vatican I was going to put forward this condemnatory canon: “If any says that the Church, who has received the divine promises, is not a external and visible society of the faithful, but only a spiritual society of the predestined or of the just known only to God, let him be anathema.” 71

20. By consequence, the proposition of Cardinal Kasper which states: “The true nature of the Church – the Church in so far as the Body of Christ – is hidden and can only be grasped by the faith”72 is certainly heretical. To add that “this nature perceived only by the faith is realized under visible forms: in the proclaimed Word, by the administration of the sacraments, and the ministry of Christian service”73 is insufficient to account for the visibility of the Church: “To become visible” – by only simple acts – is not “to be visible”.

Belonging to the Church by a Triple Unity

21. Seeing that the Church of Christ is the Catholic Church, one cannot affirm, as the supporters of ecumenism, that the triple union of faith, sacraments and hierarchical communion is only necessary to the visible communion of the Church. This assertion is taken in the sense that the absence of one of these bonds, though manifesting a rupture in the visible communion of the Church, does not signify a vital separation from the Church. On the contrary, one must affirm that these three bonds are constitutive of the unity of the Church, not in the sense that just one could unite to the Church, but of the fact that if just one of these three bonds is lacking in re vel saltem in voto,74 one would be separated from the Church and would not benefit from her supernatural life. This is what the Catholic faith obliges to believe, as that which follows will show.

Unity of the Faith

22. If the necessity of the faith is admitted by all,75 we must state precisely the nature of this faith which is necessary for salvation, and which is thus constitutive of belonging to the Church. The faith is not “this intimate sentiment begotten by the need of the divine” denounced by Saint Pius X,76 but rather as that described by the First Vatican Council: “a supernatural virtue by which, under the inspiration and the aid of the grace of God, we believe that which He has revealed to us to be true: we believe it, not because of the intrinsic truth of the things seen by the natural light of our reason, but because of the very authority of God who has revealed us these truths, who can neither deceive nor be deceived.”77 For this reason whoever refuses but one truth of the faith known to be revealed loses completely the faith which is indispensable for salvation: “Anyone who, even of only one point, refuses to really assent to the truths divinely revealed renounces entirely the faith, because he refuses to submit himself to God as the Sovereign Truth, the very motif of the faith.” 78

Unity of Government

23. “In order to guard forever intact in His Church this unity of faith and of doctrine, He [the Christ] chose a man amongst all the others, Peter…”79: so Pius IX introduces the necessity of unity to the chair of Peter, “a dogma of our divine religion which has always been preached, defended, affirmed with one heart and one unanimous voice by the Fathers and Councils of all time.” Following the Fathers, the same Pope develops: “it is from this [chair of Peter] from which flow all the rights of divine union80; he who separates himself from her cannot hope to stay in the Church,81 he who partakes of the Lamb outside of her does not have part with God.”82 Whence this celebrated sentence of Saint Augustine addressed to the schismatics: “That which belongs to you, is your impiety to separate yourselves from us; if, for all the rest, you think and you possess the truth, in persevering in your separation […] you lack that which lacks in him who has not charity.”83

Unity of the Sacraments

24. “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.”84 By these words of Our Lord, all recognize the necessity, besides the unity of the faith and the end, of a “community of means appropriate to the end”85 in order to constitute the unity of the Church: the sacraments. Such is the “Catholic Church [which Christ instituted], bought by His Blood, as the unique dwelling of the living God, […] the unique Body animated and vivified by a unique Spirit, kept harmoniously together by the unity of the faith, hope and charity, by the bonds of the sacraments, of worship and of doctrine”86

Conclusion

25. The necessity of this triple bond thus obliges us to believe that “whoever refuses to listen to the Church ought to be considered, according to the command of the Lord, ‘as a pagan and a publican’ (Mt 18, 17) and those who have disunited themselves for reasons of faith or of government cannot live in this same Body nor by consequence live by this same divine Spirit.”87


Outside of the Church, no Salvation

Are non-catholics members of the Church?

26. In consequence of that which has been said, the following proposition “those [born outside of the Catholic Church not being able to ‘be accused of the sin of division’] who believe in Christ and have been truly baptized are in communion with the Catholic Church even though this communion is imperfect” to the point that “justified by faith in Baptism are members of Christ’s body and have a right to be called Christian, and so are correctly accepted as brothers by the children of the Catholic Church” even though “the differences that exist in varying degrees between them and the Catholic Church – whether in doctrine and sometimes in discipline, or concerning the structure of the Church – do indeed create many obstacles, sometimes serious ones”88 must be attentively examined; if this proposition is understood to speak of those who continue in these differences knowingly, it is contrary to the Catholic faith. The clause affirming “they cannot be accused of the sin of involved in the separation” is at least a rash statement: remaining exteriorly in dissidence, there is nothing that indicates that they do not adhere to the separation of their predecessors, the appearances speak rather the contrary. To presume their good faith is not possible,89 as Pius IX states: “It is of faith that outside of the Apostolic and Roman Church, no one can be saved. […] Nonetheless, it must be recognized also that with certitude, that those who are invincibly ignorant of the true religion are not culpable before the Lord. But now who truly will go in his presumption to mark the boundaries of this ignorance?”90

Are there elements of sanctification and truth in the separated communities?

27. The affirmation that “a number of elements of sanctification and of truth”91 are found outside of the Church is equivocal. This proposition implies in effect the sanctifying power of the means of salvation materially present in the separated Communities. But this cannot be affirmed without distinction. Amongst these elements, those which do not require a specific disposition on the part of the subject – the baptism of a child for instance – are effectively salutary in the sense that they produce grace efficaciously in the soul of the baptized, who thereby belongs to the Catholic Church without need of sanction to such a degree that he has not reached the age of personal choice.92 For the other elements, which require the dispositions on the part of the subject in order to be efficacious, one must say that they are salutary only in the measure in which the subject is already a member of the Church by his implicit desire. This is what the councils have affirmed: “She [the Church] professes that the unity of the body of the Church has such a power that the sacraments of the Church are only useful for the salvation of those who dwell in Her”93 Yet in so far as they are separated, these communities are opposed to this implicit desire that renders the sacraments fruitful. Thus one cannot say that these communities possess elements of sanctification and truth, except materially.

Does the Holy Ghost use the separated communities as a means of salvation? The so-called “sister-churches”

28. One cannot affirm that “the Spirit of Christ does not refuse to use them [the separated communities] as a means of salvation”94 Saint Augustin affirms: “There is but one Church, who alone is called Catholic, and it is she who begets by virtue of that which remains her property in those sects who are separated from her unity, no matter who possesses them.”95 The only thing that these separated communities can realize by their own power, is the separation of these souls from ecclesial unity, as again Saint Augustine indicates: “It [baptism] does not belong to you. That which is yours are your bad sentiments and sacrilegious practices, and that you have the impiety to separate yourselves from us.”96 In the degree in which this assertion of the Council contradicts the affirmation that the Catholic Church is the unique possessor of the means of salvation, it approaches heresy. If, in according a “significance and a value in the mystery of salvation”,97 it recognizes in these separated communities a quasi-legitimacy – such as the expression “sister-churches”98 makes understood – this assertion is opposed to the catholic doctrine because it denies the unicity of the Catholic Church.

Is that which unites us greater than that which separates us?

29. If the separated Communities are not formally speaking holders of the elements of sanctification and truth – such as was said above – the proposition which states that that which unites the Catholics to dissidents is greater than that which separates them is true materially speaking, in the sense that all of these elements are references that could serve as a base for discussions that would bring them back to the fold. This assertion nonetheless cannot be formally true, and this is why Saint Augustine says: “In many things they are with me, only in a few they are not with me; but because of these few points they have separated themselves from me, it doesn’t mean anything that they be with me with all the rest.”99

Conclusion

30. The ecumenism, could only be likened to the “Branch Theory”100 condemned by the Magisterium: “Its foundation […] is such that it overturns from top to bottom the divine constitution of the Church” and its prayer for unity, “from its highest point stained and infected by heresy, absolutely cannot be tolerated.”101

 

63. Limiting ourselves to the refutation of ecumenism, we will not study the teach­ing of John Paul II concerning the redemption accomplished de facto in each person and each nation. We will simply say that such a proposition is com­pletely strange to the Catholic faith and implies its destruction from top to bottom (for example, what becomes of the necessity of baptism?)

64. Calvin, Institutiones, l. 4, c. 4.

65. Leo XIII, Encyclical Satis Cognitum, DzH nº 3300 ff.

66. Pius XI, Encyclical Mortalium animos, AAS 20 (1928), pg. 8, Pontifical Teachings, Solemnes, The Church, vol 1, nº 861.

67. Pius XII, Encyclical Mystici Corporis, AAS 35 (1943), pgs. 199-200, Pontifical Teachings, Solemnes, The Church, vol 2, nº 1015.

68. Pius XII, Encyclical Mystici Corporis, Ibid., pg. 199, Pontifical Teachings, Solemnes, The Church, vol 2, nº 1014.

69. Letter of the Holy Office to the Bishops of England, 16 September 1864, DzH nº 2888.

70. Pius IX, Allocution to the Consistory, 18 July 1861, Pontifical Teachings, Solemnes, The Church, vol 1, nº 230.

71. Second preparatory schema of Vatican I concerning the Church, canon 4, Mansi, 53, 316.

72. W. Kasper, The Engagement of the Catholic Church in Ecumenism, conference given to the General Assembly of French Protestants, 23 March 2002. Œcuménisme informations nº 325 (May 2002) and 326 (June 2002)

73. W. Kasper, ibid.

74. This triple bond must, let us repeat, be possessed either in fact or at least “by a certain desire or unconscious wish” (Pius XII, Mystici Corporis, AAS 35 (1943), pg. 243, DzH 3821). But the Church is not judge of this desire. In juridical matters – which is the case here – the Church cannot judge the interior realities of the conscience of each, but only of that which is evident: “Of the state of mind and of the intention, the Church does not judge, as they are interior; but in so far as they are apparent, she must judge them” (Leo XIII, Apostolic Letter Apostolicae curae, 13 September 1896, concerning the nullity of Anglican ordinations, ASS 29 (1896), pg. 201. DzH 3318). Therefore, even if, in her pastoral care, as a good mother, she is inclined to hope of an “at least unconscious desire” of belonging to her when she finds souls that are in danger of death (Dom. M. Prümmer, O.P., Manuale theologiae moralis, T. 1, nº 514, 3), nonetheless, juridically, the Church does not presume this appertaining in normal situations. For this reason she demands, ad cautelam, their abjuration of schism or heresy when they return to the Catholic Church (CIC 1917, can. 2314, §2). For even greater reasons she doesn’t presume the good faith of the dissidents when they are considered as a constituted body, in a community visibly separated from the Catholic Church, such as ecumenism envisages. That which we have said of the three elements necessary in order to belong to the Catholic Church presupposes the said presumption. Willing to leave this out would be moving into the uncertain and the unreal.

75. Hebrews 11, 6: “Without faith it is impossible to please God.”

76. Saint Pius X, Pascendi dominici gregis: “The faith, principle and foundation of all religion, resides in a certain internal sentiment begotten by the need for the divine. […] such is the faith for the modernists, and with faith so understood, the beginning of all religion” (Acta S. Pii X (1907), pg. 52. DzH 3477 does not cite this in its integrity). This brief description should be compared to the thought of Karol Wojtyla (The Sign of Contradiction, Ed. Fayard 1979, pgs. 31-32): “O God of infinite majesty! The trappist or the carthusian confess this God by a whole life of silence. The Bedouin wandering in the desert turns toward him when the hour of prayer approaches. And this Buddhist monk absorbed in contemplation, who purifies his spirit in turning it towards Nirvana: but is it only towards Nirvana? […] The Church of the Living God unites in her precisely these peoples who in some manner participate to this admirable and fundamental transcendence of the human spirit, because she knows that no one can appease the most profound aspirations of this spirit but He alone, the God of infinite majesty.”

77. Vatican I, Session 3, c. 3, DzH nº 3008.

78. Leo XIII, Encyclical Satis cognitum, 29 June 1896, ASS 28 (1895-1896), pg. 722. Pontifical Teachings, Solemnes, The Church, volume 1, nº 573.

79. Pius IX, Encyclical Amantissimus, 8 April 1862, Pontifical Teachings, Solemnes, The Church, volume 1, nº 233, 234-237.

80. Cf. Saint Ambrose, Epistle 11 ad imperators.

81. Cf. Saint Cyprian, De Unitate Ecclesiæ.

82. Cf. Saint Jerome, Epistle 51 ad Damasum.

83.Saint Augustine, De baptismo contra donatistas, lib. 1, ch. 14, §22.

84. Mc 16, 16.

85. Leo XIII, Encyclical Satis cognitum, ASS 28 (1895-1896), pg. 724, Pontifical Teachings, Solemnes, The Church, volume 1, nº 578.

86. Pius IX, Encyclical Amantissimus, 8 April 1862, Pontifical Teachings, Solemnes, The Church, volume 1, nº 233.

87. Pius XII, Encylical Mystici Corporis, 29 June 1943, ASS 35 (1943), pg. 203. DzH 3802.

88. Vatican II, Decree Unitatis redintegratio, nº 3, of which we cite the complete passage: “The children who are born into these communities and who grow up believing in Christ cannot be accused of the sin involved in the separation, and the Catholic Church embraces upon them as brothers, with respect and affec­tion. For men who believe in Christ and have been truly baptized are in com­munion with the Catholic Church even though this communion is imperfect. The differences that exist in varying degrees between them and the Catholic Church – whether in doctrine and sometimes in discipline, or concerning the structure of the Church – do indeed create many obstacles, sometimes serious ones, to full ecclesiastical communion. The ecumenical movement is striving to overcome these obstacles. But even in spite of them it remains true that all who have been justified by faith in Baptism are members of Christ’s body and have a right to be called Christian, and so are correctly accepted as brothers by the children of the Catholic Church”.

89. See above, note 74.

90.Pius IX, Allocution Singulari Quadam, 9 December 1954, Dz 1647 (old numbering; absent in DzH).

91. Vatican II, Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium, nº 8.

92. Benedict XIV, Brief Singulari nobis, 9 February 1749, DzH nº 2566-2568.

93. Council of Florence, Bull Cantate Domino for the Jacobites, DzH 1351.

94. Vatican II, Decree Unitatis redintegratio, nº 3.

95. Saint Augustin, De baptismo contra donatistas, lib 1, ch. 10, nº 14.

96. Saint Augustine, De baptismo contra donatistas, lib. 1, ch. 14, nº 22.

97.Vatican II, Decree Unitatis redintegratio, nº 3.

98. Cf. J. Ratzinger, Ecclesiology of the Conciliar Constitution Lumen Gentium. DC nº 2223, 2 April 2000, pg. 301. “Even though the Church be only one and subsist in a unique subject, there are ecclesial realities which exist outside of this subject: veritable local Churches and the diverse ecclesial Communities.” That is in effect that “one finds therein the elements essential for a Church: the preaching of the Word of God and baptism, the active presence of the Holy Ghost, faith, hope and charity, the forms of sanctity even to martyrdom. One can speak of a different configuration of these constitutive ecclesial elements, or Church of another sort or another type.” (W. Kasper, The Engagement of the Catholic Church in Ecumenism, conference of 23 March 2002 during the general assembly of the Protestant Federation of France. Œcuménisme informations nº 325 of May 2002 and nº 326 of June 2002)

99.Saint Augustin, in Psalmo 54, §19, quoted by Leo XIII in Satis Cognitum ASS 28 (1896), pg. 724, Pontifical Teachings, Solesmes, The Church, volume 1, n° 578.

100. Letter of the Holy Office to the Bishops of England, 16 September 1864, This theory “professes expressly that three Christian communities, the Roman Catho­lic, the Schismatic Greek and Anglican, even though separated and divided amongst themselves, can each lay claim to the name of catholic. […] This theory asks all the members to recite prayers, and to priest to offer sacrifices for its intention, that is, that these three Christian communions who, as it is suggested, constitute together the whole Catholic Church, may reunite in order to form one unique body.” DzH 2885 & 2886.

101. Ibid., DzH nº 2886-2887.