Feature Article

from
Volume XVII, Number 1
Winter, 2008

THE BURDEN AND GRACE OF ROMAN CATHOLIC LEADERSHIP
An Anglican Response to the CDF

Christopher Wells

The latest document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), the principle teaching arm of the Roman Catholic “magisterium,” says nothing about the nature of the Church and the churches, nor about the Catholic approach to ecumenism, that has not been said repeatedly before in various documents since the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). In particular, this new text, descriptively-if-cumbersomely entitled Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church, essentially presents a simplified version, in Q & A format, of the CDF’s interesting and influential 1992 text, Some Aspects of the Church Understood as Communion.

That it is not especially new does not mean, however, that Catholics and others cannot learn from the document, which rewards study and may usefully be set alongside other inter-ecclesial texts, particularly those that in recent years have focused on the nature of the Church as “communion.”

Perhaps most noteworthy about the document is its demonstration of the Catholic Church’s continual persistence in pressing two ecumenical questions. First, where is the Church? And second, how does she remain one, as we confess in the creeds, despite her imperfections—chiefly the lack of full, visible communion between all trinitarian Christians?

How to read the document, and why it matters

As with every doctrinal statement from the Vatican, this one may be read more and less generously by Catholics and non-Catholics alike, and to some extent we find what we are looking for. There are, however, some affirmations in the text that no one should ignore.

1. The document reiterates Vatican II’s position regarding where the Church is when it teaches that the Church of Christ “subsists” in the Catholic Church; for the center or heart of the one Church is gathered visibly around the bishop of Rome, as a fact of grace for all Christians. On this basis, the magisterium concludes that all other “churches and communities” — both the Orthodox and those with Reformation roots — have “defects,” as we do not yet enjoy the “fullness of grace and of truth which has been entrusted to the Catholic Church.” We have not yet, for instance, reconciled with the universal ministry of the papal office; and, in a difficult sentence for non-Roman Catholic westerners to hear: the “Christian communities born out of the Reformation of the sixteenth century” “have not preserved the genuine and integral substance of the eucharistic mystery” due to a defect in the sacramental of order (see Unitatis redintegratio 22.3), and therefore “cannot, according to Catholic doctrine, be called ‘churches’ in the proper sense.”

2. At the same time, the how of the Church’s unity is complicated in interesting and challenging ways. For “the Spirit of Christ” uses all the churches and communities “as instruments of salvation,” the document continues, whence the one Church “is present and operative in” them. Thus, as the Council concluded, in a phrase that is deeply embedded in Catholic approaches to ecumenism, a “certain but imperfect” communion exists now between all baptized Christians, who rightly call one another sister and brother in Christ.

Outstanding questions

Could it not be good news for all of us, then, if the “numerous elements of sanctification and of truth” which “are found outside” the Catholic Church’s “structure” are “gifts [that] properly belong to the Church of Christ,” and so “impel towards Catholic unity,” as the recent document puts it (quoting Lumen Gentium 8.2)? The point is that we cannot get away from one another, that we are bound by our common life in the Lord, and that our shared, paradoxical history must consequently be subjected to a rigorous scrutiny if we are to make appropriate amends for our continued divisions. We ought, for instance, to experience “the bitter taste” of our “weakness and helplessness,” as John Paul II wrote in Ut Unum Sint (1995); and whatever “authority” and “power” we claim in relation to one another “must always be seen in this perspective,” “completely at the service of God’s merciful plan.”

In this perspective of mutual “subjection to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Eph 5:21), because the gospel demands it, we might begin by recognizing with Vatican II that “often enough both sides were to blame (culpa)” for our past divisions. Our habits of simple self-justification in the face of the other’s presumed calumnies thus have no place. Moreover, we do well to acknowledge with John Paul II that “certain features of the Christian mystery have at times been more effectively emphasized” in “other communities.”

It also seems necessary, however, to track Paul’s difficult and little-discussed argument in I Corinthians 12—that “those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; whereas our more respectable members do not need this” (I Cor 12:23-24). Can these Pauline terms help us think through our divided unity, and perhaps deconstruct the stubborn prejudices and prides of warring parties?

The terms demand, first, an honest identification of less and more respectable members, a differentiation that the Catholic Church has again demonstrated a willingness to hazard. But the terms also demand that the “greatest,” as Jesus himself put it, most especially bear the burden of service: for “all who humble themselves will be exalted” (Mt 23.11-12). And perhaps in this way we can make sense of another dominical paradox: that “the least among all of you is the greatest” (Lk 9:48).

I would pose two difficult questions to my Roman Catholic siblings from this perspective.

1. How does the reiteration about a “defect” in the holy orders of the “communities” stemming from the Reformation relate, in the Catholic Church’s view, to the action of God in the sacramental celebrations of these communities? In particular, does sacramental “non-validity” rule out sacramental efficacy, and if not, what else can and should be said? The distinction may at first appear to be one without a difference. Catholic authorities at and after Vatican II have, however, proposed the distinction, and answered “no” to the question of excluded efficacy. Bishop Leon Elchinger, for instance, wrote at the time of the Council that “Baptism and the Eucharist, received with faith and charity by a Christian in good faith separated from Rome, unite him or her to the body of Christ. But where the body of Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.” More recently, Pope Benedict (in his cardinal-prefect guise) wrote to his friend and former colleague, the Lutheran Bishop Hanselmann of Bavaria, that “the question of the Eucharist cannot be restricted to the problem of ‘validity,’” so that Catholics need not “deny the saving presence of the Lord in the Lutheran” — and presumably the Anglican (and what of others?) — “Lord’s Supper.”

If this is the Catholic view: that Christ is present efficaciously in at least some non-Roman Catholic western eucharistic celebrations, one longs both for a charitable restatement and some development of the point in documents like the recent one from the CDF. For how is the Lord present in the Eucharist as it is celebrated simultaneously in churches that do not yet have the wherewithal or the courage to share the sacrament with one another? The question is difficult in light of Paul’s argument in I Corinthians 11 about unity as a condition of “worthy” eating and drinking. And it leads to a second question:

2. When can we expect to hear more explicit reflection from the Catholic Church regarding her own vulnerability in division? As recently as July 2, 2007, in a homily for the Feast of Sts Peter and Paul, the pope said that Christian divisions “have wounded the unity of the Church with consequences that still exist today.” His statement thus matches what the CDF taught in 1992, reiterated in the official commentary for the new document (available on the Vatican website): that our divisions “wound” the Catholic Church herself, which is “called by the Lord to become for all ‘one flock’ with ‘one shepherd’ (Jn 10:16).”

Sentences such as these belie the oft-heard suggestion that the Catholic Church cannot distinguish between the perfect unity of the Church in Christ and the imperfect unity of the same body in time. The Council after all taught that “the divisions among Christians prevent the Church from attaining the fullness of catholicity proper to her.” Is it possible, however, that the alleged defect in non-Catholic churches converges with the wounds that we all have incurred in our would-be separations? The CDF in fact places in parentheses behind the English word “wound” the Latin defectus rather than the usual vulnus — a small token of a perhaps-incipient commitment on the part of the Catholic Church to understanding the terms as synonymous: since whatever is suffered by one member will be shared by the others (I Cor 12.26).

Conclusion

Obviously Rome’s ecumenical lexicon remains a stumbling block to many Christians: presumptuously authoritative hence annoyingly authoritarian to most mainline Protestants; misguided hence largely irrelevant, however praiseworthily “clear,” to many Orthodox and evangelical Protestants; and by turns agonizingly attractive and repulsive on varying points to many catholic-minded Anglicans and Lutherans, among others. And in every case it is a struggle to listen to Rome’s soundings with at least a measure of equanimity, if not exactly gratitude. For she so often seems to teach without being asked, supposing that she has a brief that extends to the whole of the Christian world and beyond.

I would argue, however, that the Catholic Church rightly adopts this burdensome mantle on account of its commitment to visible catholicity; whence the message is a gift, albeit a painful one—not only to receive, but, we should presume, to offer. The avowed end of Catholic teaching is communion-in-love, a goal and a vocation that is irreproachable on gospel grounds. That is, Christians cannot, by definition, argue that “godly union and concord,” in the words of the collect, are not what we are to be about. And yet, as John Paul wrote in 1995, the path of progress in communion between Christians is at once “full of joy” and “difficult,” as not only “doctrinal differences need to be resolved,” but “the burden of long-standing misgivings inherited from the past, and of mutual misunderstandings and prejudices” must also be laid to rest. And how difficult this is, when “complacency, indifference, and insufficient knowledge of one another often make the situation worse,” the pope continued. Thus,

the commitment to ecumenism must be based upon the conversion of hearts and upon prayer, which will also lead to the necessary purification of past memories. With the grace of the Holy Spirit, the Lord’s disciples, inspired by love, by the power of the truth and by a sincere desire for mutual forgiveness and reconciliation, are called to re-examine together their painful past and the hurt which that past regrettably continues to provoke even today. All together, they are invited by the ever fresh power of the Gospel to acknowledge with sincere and total objectivity the mistakes made and the contingent factors at work at the origins of their deplorable divisions. What is needed is a calm, clear-sighted, and truthful vision of things, a vision enlivened by divine mercy and capable of freeing people’s minds and of inspiring in everyone a renewed willingness, precisely with a view to proclaiming the Gospel to the men and women of every people and nation. (Ut Unum Sint 2)

Non-Roman Catholic Christians should ask ourselves, then, as we read the latest missive of the CDF, whether we still agree (Anglicans, for instance, will recall statements of successive Lambeth conferences) that visible unity with all Christians is a condition upon the very proclamation of the Gospel. If we do, then the occasionally irksome or even offensive words of Rome will pale in comparison to the seriousness of the task before us; and the rebuke of her invitation and the sting of her embrace will themselves be provisions of providence that may be received as a goad to the further work that beckons. For who will stand up and say that chastisement has no place here, because we have already, in our communities, achieved “sincere and total objectivity” regarding “the origins of [our] deplorable divisions,” in the pope’s words?

Proper penitence must accordingly remain our watchword and our singular petition: that, by the “grace of the Holy Spirit” and as a gift of “divine mercy,” we may be granted humble repentance, “inspired by love,” which is the perfection of faith and hope. And if, in the meantime, we feel the need to “boast,” let it be of our “weakness,” by which “the power of Christ” may perfectly dwell in us (II Cor 12.9)!

This article republishes, with permission, parts of a shorter piece that appeared in The Living Church (August 12, 2007).

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