THE CHURCH
I
THE CHURCH CONSIDERED IN HERSELF
Ecclesiae tuae, quaesumus, Domine, preces placatus admitte: ut destructis adversitatibus et erroribus universis, secura tibi serviat libertate 1
The Church, Militant, Suffering and Triumphant by Andrea Buonaiuto (1365)
After a brief introduction to expound Catholic teaching concerning the
Church in Herself, we shall see how the Council opposes this teaching.
Introduction
In this introduction we shall briefly expound the Church’s:
a)
Nature;
b)
End, and Means for Attaining the End;
c)
Constitution;
d)
Properties;
e)
Necessity.
a) The Nature of the Church
The Church is the Mystical Body of Christ. Pope Pius XII declares in Mystici Corporis (1943): “To describe
this true Church of Christ… there is no name more noble, none more excellent,
none more Divine, than the expression: ‘The Mystical Body of Jesus Christ’ ”.
This name, which originates in Pauline teaching, signifies in a broad sense the
Church as a society of angels and men on earth, in Purgatory, and in Heaven,
and in a narrow sense the Church on earth. We shall expound the meaning of the
name more fully in section A that follows.
b) End and Means
The End of the Church is the Salvation (or Sanctification) of mankind.
The means by which She attains this end are the three offices delegated to Her
by Our Lord: that of teaching, government, and sanctification 2,
all of which He received from the Father.
c) Constitution
Our Lord Jesus Christ established
the Church as a Hierarchy. He conferred on the Apostle St. Peter, and
thereafter on the Bishops of Rome (the Popes), the first place among the
bishops and the visible headship of the Church, constituting him principle of
Her unity. As visible Head of the Church, the Pope has a share in the authority
of, and represents, the invisible Head of the Church Who is Christ.
Our Blessed Lord entrusted to the Church Divine Revelation, the Graces
he had merited by His death, together with the corresponding offices of
teaching, sanctification, and government mentioned above. It was to the
Apostles, and thereafter to the bishops that were to succeed them and to the
priests that they were to ordain, that He delegated these offices for the
salvation of mankind.
d) Properties
i) The Church is Indefectible, i.e. She will remain the Institution of
Salvation till the end of time;
ii) She is Infallible;
iii) She has four ‘Notes’ (or characteristics) of Unity, Sanctity,
Catholicity, and Apostolicity.
e) Necessity
The Church is necessary for salvation. In other words, Outside the
Church there is no Salvation.
*
The Opposition of the Council
to Catholic doctrine concerning the Church in Herself
Of the Catholic teaching that we have just briefly set forth, the
Council silences, or manifests opposition to, the dogmas concerning:
-
the Mystical Body of Christ;
-
the Constitution of the Church, namely Her Hierarchy;
-
the Four Notes of the Church;
-
the End of the Church, namely the salvation of souls 3.;
-
the Necessity of the Church, namely Outside the Church
there is no Salvation.
We shall treat the first three dogmas here; the other two later 4.
We shall conclude the chapter with a section on Our Blessed Lady, as being the
most sublime and perfect member of the Church, as well as Her model. The
sections of this chapter will read, then, as follows:
A. The Mystical Body
of Christ;
B. The Hierarchy of
the Church;
C. The Four Notes of
the Church;
D. Our Blessed Lady.
A.
The Mystical Body
of Christ
We have observed that the Council passes over in silence the doctrine
that the Catholic Church is the ‘Mystical Body of Christ’. It is true that the
term occurs some 19 times in the Council, but only in passing, as a synonym for
the Catholic Church, and without doctrinal intent. To appreciate what St. Pius
XII calls the ‘excellence’ of this name and what precisely the Council passes
over in silence, we here undertake to expound it in somewhat greater depth.
We shall consider:
1. The Nature of the
Mystical Body;
2. That part of it
which is the Church Militant.
1. The Nature of the Mystical Body
To describe the Church as ‘Mystical Body’ is to describe Her in the
first instance as a society with Christ as its head, which consist in the
angels and in all men validly baptized who are not damned or excommunicated, or
who have not formally apostasized, become heretics, or schismatics. This
society is extended over the Earth, Purgatory, and Heaven (as the Church
Militant, Suffering, and Triumphant), and in this sense is known as the
Communion of Saints. On earth She is distinguished into the ‘Church visible’
(for instance in Her ceremonies and religious institutions) and the ‘Church
invisible’ (for instance in the Grace and holiness of Her members). She relates
to God in the following ways: Our Lord is Her Head, Founder, Conserver, Spouse,
and Redeemer; the Holy Spirit is Her soul.
‘To
describe the Church as ‘Mystical Body’ is to describe Her in the first instance
as a society with Christ as its head, which consists in the angels and in all
men validly baptized who are not damned or excommunicated, or who have not
formally apostasized, become heretics, or schismatics.’
Now it is the intimate relationship of Christ to the Church, as Head to the Body, which lends to the Body, that is to say to the society that is the Church, all of its particular properties and characteristics: the fact that it is supernatural, hierarchical, One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic, and necessary for salvation 5. We shall now show how Christ is the principle of all the Church’s properties and characteristics:
-
Christ, as God, being supernatural, is the principle
of the supernatural nature of the Church;
-
Christ, as God, being a Unity (in the sense of
wholeness), is the principle of the Unity of the Church in Her wholeness 6:
the principle of Her hierarchical, doctrinal 7,
and sacramental 8 unity;
-
Christ, as God being a Unity (in the sense of
uniqueness), is the principle of the Unity of the Church in Her uniqueness;
- Christ, as God, being the Head of all things, is the
principle of the Hierarchy of the Church;
-
Christ, as God, being Holy, is the principle of the
Holiness of the Church;
-
Christ, being the object of all supernatural Truth,
being the principal agent of all the sacraments, and the source and motivating
force of the sanctification of all men to the highest degree, is the principle
of the Church’s Catholicism;
-
Christ, as the principal agent of the Sacraments and
as the ground of the Immutability of the Faith, is the principal of the
Church’s Apostolicity: Her immutable doctrine and Her unbroken succession;
-
Christ, as Redeemer, being necessary for salvation, is
the principle of the necessity of the Church. Indeed, Heaven, in the final
analysis, is nothing else than the Mystical Body of Christ Itself in its
definitive form as the Church Triumphant.
We see in conclusion how the name ‘Mystical Body’ expresses the nature
of the Church as a society and all of Her properties, and how the name may
consequently stand as the very definition of the Church. To silence or to deny
the definition of the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ is, then, to remove
all possible theological justification for Her particular nature as a society,
and for all of Her particular properties and characteristics: for Her
supernatural dimension, for Her being a hierarchy, for Her being One, Holy,
Catholic, and Apostolic, and necessary for salvation; it is to degrade her to
the level of a secular, humanitarian association, like any other. What
definition does the Council give of the Church in the place of this one? No
definition at all, in accordance with its skepticism towards the expression of
Truth, but rather a confused and distorted picture of the Church’s nature which
we shall present at the end of chapter 5.
.
2. The Church Militant
Remarkable is the Council’s complete silence, even in its orthodox
passages treating of holiness, concerning the Church Militant. We may
understand the term ‘Church Militant’ to refer to spiritual warfare both on the
social and on the personal levels. Examples of spiritual warfare on the social
level are the liberation of the Holy Land by the Crusaders and the defense of
Europe from Moslem aggression; spiritual warfare is waged on the personal
level, by contrast, by every man that has ever lived. This means that the
latter type of spiritual warfare is universal, and therefore more important
than the former.
The Council designates the Church in this world, not as ‘Church
Militant’, but rather as the ‘Pilgrim Church’, a term poor in content, applying
to the Church as a whole little more than the Catholic vision of the individual
man, the homo viator, travelling to
Heaven during the course of his earthly life. The term ‘Church Militant’, by
contrast (like the term the ‘Mystical Body of Christ’), is rich in meaning, in
fact the most expressive term for the activity required of Her members in their
passage through this world.
The purpose of the Church and of every man who has ever lived, lives, or
will ever live, is the salvation of the soul. And yet this is a difficult
enterprise in which, as the Church has always taught, many will fail. Man is
beset by dangerous and invisible enemies, more intelligent than he, with long
experience of deceit and murder, working against him either directly, or
indirectly through human allies: the enemies of Jesus Christ, known as ‘The
World’, or through ‘The Enemy Within’, that is to say Fallen Nature: ‘The
Flesh’, the Triple Concupiscence of Man. The primary intent of the devils is to
seduce man into mortal sin, and so to thwart his salvation and have his
immortal soul consigned to Hell.
The intent of God, by contrast, which He realizes by His gift of Faith,
sacraments, inspirations, Providence, and through the ministry of the angels,
is that man should overcome the attacks of the devils and so attain to the
Church Triumphant of Heaven, whether directly on death, or indirectly after
passing through the realm occupied by the Church Suffering, or Purgatory. At
the head
of the Church Militant stands Christ the King, triumphant over sin and death and
over the whole human race, Catholic and non-Catholic alike. This then is the
drama of human life and of the Church on earth: True indeed it is that: ‘The
life of man upon earth is a warfare, and his days are like the days of a
hireling’ 9.
‘At
the head of the Church Militant
stands Christ the King, triumphant over sin
and death and over the whole human race, Catholic and non-Catholic alike.’
It will be instructive to list the instances of some of these key terms
in the Council documents:
1.
Church Militant: 0;
2.
Church Suffering: 0;
3.
Church Triumphant: 0;
4.
Christ the King: 0;
5.
Fall / Fallen Nature: 7 instances, but only in
passing;
6.
Original Sin: 3 instances, but only in passing;
7.
Concupiscence: 0
8.
Mortal Sin: 0
9.
Purgatory: 0;
10. Hell: 0 10.
Historical Note 11
Bishop Franić of Split had recommended that the title ‘Church Militant’
be added to the title ‘Pilgrim Church’ in the scheme on the Church: ‘…We cannot
attain or conserve peace in our souls or in the Church without a difficult and
continuous battle… with spiritual arms… How can we combat as good soldiers of
Christ… if we do not cultivate… the virtue of resistance to the malignant and
atheistic world!’ In adopting this approach, the Bishop was following the lead
of Pope Pius XII who, in many of his allocutions, had spoken of the Church
Militant, for example of the need of all Christians to ‘stand up and fight till
death, if necessary, for their Mother the Church.’ 12
The primates of Croatia and Poland quoted above (two countries then
still subjugated to Communist dominion), as well as the prelates just
mentioned, were of course speaking particularly about spiritual warfare in its
social dimension, but the Council’s pacifism was not in fact limited to the
social sphere: to the definitive abandonment of war and to the condoning of,
and overtures towards, atheistic Communism, but rather extended also to the
inner life, manifesting an unfounded optimism in man, both in the social and in
the personal spheres.
1‘Admit, placated, we beseech Thee, Lord, the prayers of Thy Church, so that, all adversities and errors having been destroyed, She may serve Thee in secure freedom’ - additional Mass collect ‘Against the Persecutors of the Church’ abolished in the liturgical changes prior to the Novus Ordo. This certainly has not helped the Church in any way.
2 sanctification in
the narrower sense of the word, as signifying the administration of the
sacraments
3 we note that the
means to that end, that is the three munera,
are correspondingly neglected
4 in the next chapter
and in chapter 6 (on the dignity of man)
5 we could add other
doctrines to this list such as that of indefectibility, but limit ourselves
here to the themes treated in this book. We shall explain more precisely below
the meaning of the Notes of Unity, Catholicity and Apostolicity
6 St.
Cyprian declares, de Unitate Ecclesiae
s.6: ‘The Lord says: ‘I and the Father are one’; and again it is written of the
Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit: ‘And these three are one.’ And does
any-one believe that this unity which thus comes from the divine strength and
coheres in celestial sacraments, can be divided in the Church, and can be
separated by the parting asunder of opposing wills? He who does not hold this
unity does not hold God’s law, does not hold the Faith of the Father and of the
Son, does not hold life and salvation.’
7 since the whole
Faith is centered on Him
8 since it is He that
operates as primary agent in all the sacraments
9 Job 7,1
10 The Council’s
silence on Hell is the more remarkable in the light of the Apparitions of
Fatima of which it constituted an important theme. ‘It has been reserved for
modern and contemporaneous atheism, carried to the pitch of delirium, to outdo
the impiety of all ages by denying the existence of Hell.’ Father F.X. Schouppe
S.J. (Tan Books) in his treatment of Hell, warmly to be recommended to the
reader
11 RdM IV 5, p.310-14
12
discourse to Azione Cattolica Italiana
, 1953
13 ‘No more war...’
