\u201cWe declare, say, define and pronounce, that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The average modern reader concludes these words mean: \u201cWe know exactly where the Church both is and is not. It\u2019s in the visible Catholic communion and only<\/i> members of the visible Catholic Church go to Heaven.\u201d After this basic assumption has been made, most people go on to assume it is simply a matter of deciding what you think about that proposition. Generally, people fall into one of the following groups:<\/p>\n1. Those nice people who say hopefully, \u201cThat statement was not dogma, but just Boniface\u2019s opinion.\u201d<\/p>\n
2. Those Progressive Dissenting Catholics who say, \u201cThat statement used to be narrow-minded Catholic dogma but Vatican II thankfully contradicts all that. How the Church has grown!\u201d<\/p>\n
3. Those anti-Catholics say derisively, \u201cThat statement used to be unbiblical Catholic dogma but Vatican II reversed all that. How the supposedly infallible Church has flatly contradicted the Bible and itself!\u201d<\/p>\n
4. Those Reactionary Dissenting Catholics who say, \u201cThat statement used to be glorious Catholic dogma but Vatican II betrayed all that. How the Second Vatican Council has corrupted the One True Faith!\u201d<\/p>\n
5. Those orthodox Catholics who say, \u201cUnam Sanctam<\/i>\u2018s definition is still dogma and the teaching of the Second Vatican Council does not contradict it or the Bible. Rather, the Council develops the Faith of the Church infallibly taught since the apostles, a faith which has never demanded we believe that \u201cThe Church is found solely in the visible Catholic communion, nor that only members of the visible Catholic Church can go to Heaven.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Let\u2019s look at these five views of Unam Sanctam<\/i>.<\/p>\n
First things first, I must disappoint Group #1 by making clear that the Faith does not allow us the easy out of denying the dogmatic nature of Unam Sanctam<\/i> any more than it allowed Arius to fudge the difficult and seemingly contradictory proposition that God is One, yet Three. As John Hardon, S.J. points out in his Catholic Catechism<\/i>, the passage cited above was \u201csolemnly defined and represents traditional Catholic dogma on the Church\u2019s necessity for salvation.\u201d When a Pope declares, pronounces and defines, he is using the formula to make crystal clear that he is delivering, not his personal opinion, but the dogmatic teaching of the Catholic Church. The fact is then, Pope Boniface VIII committed the Church to this proposition for the rest of her history. We cannot dodge this with a convenient \u201cthat was then, this is now.\u201d If it was dogma once, it still is.<\/p>\n
However, neither can we dodge another fact of Catholic history: the Second Vatican Council. At that Council, the Church formulated Lumen Gentium<\/i> in which, 660 years after Unam Sanctam<\/i>, she declared, \u201cThe Church knows that she is joined in many ways to the baptized who are honored by the name of Christian, but do not profess the Catholic faith in its entirety or have not preserved unity or communion under the successor of Peter.\u201d<\/p>\n
To Groups 2, 3, and 4, this sounds like a flat contradiction. For all these folk make the fatal error of placing one or other of the Church\u2019s teachings in opposition to (and superiority over) the other. Thus, Progressive Dissenting Catholics, Anti-Catholics, and Reactionary Dissenting Catholics all assume that Unam Sanctam<\/i> was simply vetoed by a newly-coined doctrine in Lumen Gentium<\/i> which essentially declared that our relationship to the successor of Peter doesn\u2019t matter one iota. If we agree about this, all that remains for us to do is to decide whether to cheer along with Progressive Dissenters (for the Church\u2019s \u201cdeepened maturity\u201d) to gloat along with anti-Catholics (over the alleged collapse of the Church\u2019s infallibility) or to grumble along with Reactionary Dissenters (about those damned modernists who hijacked the Church at Vatican II).<\/p>\n
The problem with this assumption is simply this: it\u2019s not true. First, the Church, centuries before Vatican II, regarded Orthodox sacraments as valid, which is awfully hard to do if you don\u2019t think Christ can be found anywhere but in the Catholic Church. Similarly, it has always regarded the Baptism of non-Catholics as valid\u2013and a valid Baptism means you are, in some sense, in union with Christ. Still more recently and most plainly, (but still well before the Council) Fr. Leonard Feeney was excommunicated for insisting that only people in visible communion with the Catholic Church could be saved. So this simplistic \u201cWe\u2019re in, you\u2019re out\u201d reading of Unam Sanctam<\/i> (and the corollary that Lumen Gentium<\/i> \u201ccancelled\u201d it) doesn\u2019t fly.<\/p>\n
So is there a more balanced picture that reverences both Unam Sanctam<\/i> and Lumen Gentium<\/i> as authentic magisterial teaching? Yes. To find it, let\u2019s begin with an imperfect analogy.<\/p>\n
There is a priest I know (call him Fr. Smith) whom I have come to regard as a second father. I came to do so because, as an Evangelical, I first loved Christ and the things of Christ and was doing so for years before I met this man. As I sought to draw closer to the things of Christ, I then happened to meet Fr. Smith and to discover that he loved and understood far more deeply than me the things that I myself sought, for he is a disciple of our Lord too. When I recognized this, I realized our Lord had put into my life a man who could disciple me and to whom my life was inextricably linked in Christ and by Christ. In short, I had been a disciple of Fr. Smith for years before I met him\u2013because I was first a disciple of Jesus.<\/p>\n
Thus, in spirit, Fr. Smith became my father and I am, so to speak, subject to him in Christ precisely because I desire what he desires\u2013union with Christ.<\/p>\n
If this seems difficult to grasp, it should be noted that it\u2019s a concept as old as the New Testament. For when we look there we discover Jesus saying exactly the same thing:<\/p>\n
John said to him, \u201cTeacher, we saw a man casting out demons in your name, and we forbade him, because he was not following us.\u201d But Jesus said, \u201cDo not forbid him; for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon after to speak evil of me. For he that is not against us is for us.<\/i> (Mark 9:38-40)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Jesus\u2019 point is that, in following Him, both the man casting out demons and the apostles were, whether the man or the apostles realized it or not, brought into some kind of union with one another through Him. It didn\u2019t matter whether the apostles or the man were conscious of it. Their mutual obedience to Him put them in relationship to each other, just as the right alignment of spokes to a hub necessarily put the spokes in right alignment to one another. The fact is, it is His Spirit, not us, who is the principle of unity holding His Body together and drawing its members into ever more perfect union with each other. But that does not mean (as I had long believed as an Evangelical) that unity with the Body of Christ doesn\u2019t matter so long as one is \u201cspiritual\u201d. For to be brought into union with the Body of Christ at all is to brought into the order that Christ has established for that Body since<\/p>\n
his gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. (Ephesians 4:11-13).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Or, to put it into the simplest form, if A=B, then B=A. That is, if one is a Christian at all, one is, as Lumen Gentium<\/i> says, in some kind of union with the Church, the Body of Christ. This is why the Church teaches and has always taught that \u201coutside the Church, there is no salvation\u201d. For the Church is the company of the saved. To talk about salvation \u201coutside the Church\u201d is like talking about swimming outside the water. It is the logical consequence of Jesus\u2019 statement, \u201cHe who is not with me is against me\u201d (Matthew 12:30).<\/p>\n
It therefore follows that to be subject to the gospel to any<\/i> degree is to be in union, to that degree, with the office of Peter since the office of Peter was created by Christ for one purpose only, to help bring people into subjection to Christ. It is therefore impossible to accept Christ without accepting the authority of Peter\u2019s office to some degree or other. If you say to Jesus, \u201cYou are the Christ, the Son of the living God\u201d you are submitting to the judgment of Peter, who said it first (Matthew 16:16). If you declare that salvation is by grace through Christ, you are again subjecting yourself to Peter, who was the first to say that by the Holy Spirit (Acts 15:11). If you teach that Jesus is the second person of the Blessed Trinity, God from God, light from Light, true God from true God, you are simply agreeing with what the Church in council and in union with the office of Peter has always taught. If you acknowledge the canonicity of the New Testament books, you are likewise submitting to the judgment of the Petrine office, which made that call in the fourth century and ratified it in the sixteenth. In short, it is not possible to be a Christian at all without already submitting (whether you realize it or not and whether you like it or not) to Peter in precisely the sense that Unam Sanctam<\/i> speaks of.<\/p>\n
Naturally, it will be noted that such union with the Roman Pontiff is, for Protestants and Orthodox, imperfect. Just so. But the point nonetheless holds that such union is real<\/i>. And the reason it is real is precisely because the Pope is not the principle<\/i> of unity, but merely the sign<\/i> of unity. The principle of unity is the Spirit of Christ Himself. It is He who binds together the apostolic Church with those who appear (like the exorcist in Mark) to be \u201coutside\u201d the Church yet who are, in a real but imperfect way, in communion with her. That\u2019s because it is simply not possible for there to be more than one Body. This is true, not because the power-hungry Roman pontiff must have absolute control over all Christians, but because Christ cannot ultimately be divided. What Paul said in Ephesians remains just as true today:<\/p>\nThere is one body<\/b> and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all. (Ephesians 4:4-6)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
So it is simply impossible for there to be, in any ultimate sense, more than one Body. And since that Body is, by Christ\u2019s solemn word, founded on Peter the Rock, it is not possible to belong to it without, in some way, being subject to the office of the one who was given the charge to \u201cfeed my sheep\u201d (John 21:15-19).<\/p>\n
I say the office<\/i>, mind you, not the person<\/i> of the Pope. As a person, a Pope can be a perfect jerk and some have been. In the same way, the office of the Davidic monarch (also founded by God) was often filled by extremely sub-optimal men. But the office never went away nor lost its God-ordained authority.<\/p>\n
Dante, a contemporary of the man who wrote Unam Sanctam,<\/i> makes precisely this point in his famous Divine Comedy<\/i>. In an age of Da Vinci Code<\/i> illiteracy and ignorance of the Catholic faith, it comes as a surprise to many modern readers to discover that so far from running a police state, the medieval Church was, in fact, full of critics who had lots of tart things to say about, among other things, the Pope and other clergy of the time. Dante was chief among these critics in his day and, in particular, was chief among the critics of Pope Boniface VIII, the author of Unam Sanctam<\/i>. Dante, in fact, places Boniface in his Inferno<\/i>, damned forever. But note this: Dante does not damn him for the teaching of Unam Sanctam<\/i>, which he takes for granted. He damns him for his moral corruption yet, like a typical Catholic, honors his office. That\u2019s why Boniface is buried upside down in hell: as Pope he is oriented toward Heaven even when, as a sinner, he is worthy of Hell, for the way out of Dante\u2019s Hell is not up but down, through the center of the earth, then up Mt. Purgatory, and into Paradise.<\/p>\n
So is this partial and imperfect unity enough? Depends on what you mean by \u201cenough\u201d. If you mean \u201cenough to be saved\u201d then I submit this is Minimum Daily Adult Requirement thinking. No lover asks \u201cWhat\u2019s the absolute bare minimum amount of contact with my Beloved I can get away with?\u201d Similarly, if, as the Church claims, the fullness of revelation subsists in the Catholic communion, then \u201cHow little contact with the fullness of revelation can I get away with?\u201d is the exact wrong question for somebody who is serious about discipleship to Christ. Our goal, according to Scripture, is not to achieve bare minimums of love, fellowship and discipleship with Christ and His Bride, but to \u201cattain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ;\u2026 we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every joint with which it is supplied, when each part is working properly, makes bodily growth and upbuilds itself in love\u201d (Ephesians 4:13-16). When people tell us \u201cI\u2019ll be there in spirit!\u201d we know they mean \u201cI won\u2019t be there.\u201d Similarly, a merely partial spiritual unity, while a good start, is a bad finish. That is why we must all continue to work toward full unity in Christ, neither denying our commonalities nor papering over our differences.<\/p>\n
At this point, members of groups 3 and 4 (who tend to take Heaven more seriously as something that is, like, there<\/i> and not simply\u2013as members of group 2 are wont to say\u2013a \u201cconcept\u201d or a \u201cbeautiful myth\u201d) are likely to ask, \u201cSo does all this boil down to saying the Church thinks Catholics are going to Heaven and non-Catholics aren\u2019t? Or does it really mean the Church is now saying that everybody is saved?<\/p>\n
Again, both of these are the wrong questions: which is to say they are nonsense questions. The Church makes no comments on infernal population statistics. Rather, the Church teaches that because validly baptized non-Catholics are real members of the Body of Christ, they share in the life of the Blessed Trinity and therefore share with Catholics the Hope of salvation.<\/p>\n
That said, mark that it is Hope<\/i>, not certainty, they share with Catholics. For it is important to remember that Catholics don\u2019t even assume that even Catholics are automatically going to Heaven. The whole point, as Paul says, is that Hope means we have not yet, in this life, attained what we hope for.<\/p>\nFor in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. (Romans 8:24-25)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Catholics don\u2019t believe in \u201conce saved, always saved\u201d any more than in salvation by demographics. So the mere fact that somebody says they are a Christian, whether non-Catholic or<\/i> Catholic, doesn\u2019t mean we assume they are going to Heaven. Till we die, we retain the radical freedom to reject the grace of God and end up among the damned. So Catholics leave God to judge all that.<\/p>\n
But by the same token, Catholics also don\u2019t assume that anybody (even a non-Christian and indeed even an atheist) is going to Hell. The Church has always believed that those who do not know Christ by name may yet respond to the promptings of His Spirit and so ultimately be saved by Him. She believes this because it was taught by Jesus Christ in the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, which describes the judgment of people who had no idea they were serving (or rejecting) Jesus as they answered (or refused) the demands of conscience with respect to \u201cthe least of these\u201d. That is why both the saved and the damned in the parable reply with astonishment to the King, \u201cLord, when did we see thee hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee drink? And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee, or naked and clothe thee? And when did we see thee sick or in prison and visit thee?\u201d (Matthew 25:37-39). Some of the saved, says our Lord, are going to be astonished at their salvation. They just thought they were doing the right thing and had no idea they were, in fact, answering the prompting of the Holy Spirit to obey the will of Christ. As Paul says, \u201cWhen Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or perhaps excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus\u201d (Romans 2:14-16). In short, what matters incomparably more than calling Jesus \u201cLord, Lord\u201d is obeying<\/i> Him. Or as St. John of the Cross put it more sweetly, \u201cAt the evening of life, we shall be judged on our love.\u201d<\/p>\n
But,again, that doesn\u2019t mean, \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter if you are Catholic or not.\u201d We live in a fallen world and are fallen creatures who need every bit of help we can get from the grace of God to become the glorious love-filled creatures God calls us to be. And even with that help, history demonstrates our genius for being schleps and sinners. We are like patients in a hospital requiring intensive care, but with the hope and promise that the full panoply of modern medicine could give us back our life if we cooperate with the Divine Physician and let Him use all the treatments He has tucked away in His little black bag. That little black bag is called \u201cthe fullness of Christ\u2019s revelation in the Catholic communion\u201d. It includes the common life, common worship, and common teaching of the Church, including the seven sacraments, the accumulated wisdom of the Tradition both in Scripture and in the life of the Church, the Magisterium (including the Papacy), and the \u201criches of his glorious inheritance in the saints\u201d (Ephesians 1:18). Other Churches and ecclesial bodies like to use various items out of that black bag (say, the Bible, or Baptism, or the doctrine of the Trinity, or some particular moral teaching like the indissolubility of marriage, or predestination, or free will) in various combinations and to varying degrees and believers do well to avail themselves of as much of God\u2019s treasury in the Church\u2019s Tradition as they can lay hold of.<\/p>\n
But if you are mortally ill (and the whole human race is mortally ill with sin), it\u2019s kind of crazy to say \u201cI find that I\u2019m most comfortable when the Doctor prescribes aspirin, and I do like his penicillin now and then, but I don\u2019t want his other prescriptions and treatments and I won\u2019t allow him to send other hospital staff to treat me.\u201d If we were mortally ill, we\u2019d want whatever the Doctor has available to heal us.<\/p>\n
Likewise, though the Catholic Church rejoices that real elements of the saving gospel are present and working in other churches and ecclesial bodies, though she even rejoices that the semina verbi<\/i> or \u201cseeds of the Word\u201d can even be found in the various non-Christian religious and philosophical traditions of the world, she nonetheless points out that the best thing of all is to lay hold of the fullness<\/i> of His gifts. So the Church, of course, encourages anyone who can do so to become Catholic. It doesn\u2019t presume to judge those who do not, for we mortals cannot know the reasons why others make the choices they do. People may refuse the Church out of ignorance, or woundedness, or some other cause that renders them inculpable for rejecting her. However, it is only sensible to point out that, everything else being equal, if we say<\/i> we want God, but refuse the fullness of His gifts, then it is worth asking ourselves if we really want God after all or are, in fact, seeking something else.<\/p>\n
As an Evangelical who discovered how much truth was in the Catholic faith and how much I agreed with it, I came to the realization that it was not enough for me to say \u201cI share the same goals as Peter, so I am \u2018spiritually subject\u2019 to him already and do not need to be sacramentally and ecclesially subject as well.\u201d I realized that the very essence of what Peter proclaims is that the Word became Flesh. Moreover, I came to realize that there was, in fact, nothing in the Church\u2019s deposit of Faith that was either opposed to reason, nor anti-biblical. So I eventually concluded that it was therefore my duty, in obedience to Christ\u2019s prayer for unity in John 17, to enflesh my faith by becoming really, tangibly, physically, sacramentally joined to the visible Church our Lord commended to Peter\u2019s care and feeding. For myself, I could no longer say \u201cI\u2019ll be with you in spirit\u201d to the Pope if I was not also willing to really be with him in body as well.<\/p>\n
Catholics do not say, and never have said, that they are the sole possessors of revelation. Indeed, the Church does not \u201cpossess\u201d revelation at all. Revelation possesses her and that revelation, who is Christ, has (she teaches) committed Himself fully to her. \u201cGod,\u201d said the great Protestant writer George MacDonald, \u201cis easy to please, but hard to satisfy.\u201d On the one hand, God is delighted when the most miserable sinner takes the smallest serious step toward the love of God and neighbor. On the other hand, He will not be completely happy until every last person He came to save is completely perfected in the image of Christ and overflowing with perfect love for God and neighbor. This same pattern is supremely evident in the Catholic Church\u2019s understanding of her relationship with her members, whether in full or very imperfect communion. For the Church is happy to recognize even the smallest commonalities she may share, not only with other Christians, but even with non-Christian religious traditions and the great philosophical traditions of paganism. The Church can even find things to affirm in virtuous atheists. But at the same time, the Church is acutely aware that there is a real difference between imperfect and perfect unity and so she too\u2013easy to please, but hard to satisfy\u2013labors toward that Day when all the members of the Body of Christ will be perfected in faith, hope and love.<\/p>\n
Till That Day, we know where the Church is; we do not know where it is not.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
He writes: how would you define the doctrine of Extra Eccelsiam Nulla Salus and what that means for non-Catholics or those who have left the Church? I respond this way: Just Exactly Where is the Church? Unam Sanctam is the sort of document that gives our Protestant brothers and sisters a real jolt, primarily because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[8],"class_list":["post-99507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-mailbag"],"yoast_head":"\n
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