So what is left to believe? I was a fool for even defending the church all these years on its initial statement in MCC? The liberals at that time were spot on?
Why can’t we simply see the Protestants as having a relationship rather than being an imperfect organ? At least then its consistent with what was there before
Is not the cost of this change to accommodate ecumenism too high?
This was not done to accommodate ecumenism. This is a development of theological thought. The basic doctrine remains unchanged. There is a Mystical Body of which Christ is the head.
What has evolved is the Protestant community. The Church looks at it in its present state. You have to keep in mind the words of Pope Benedict, because they’re very helpful. “Today’s Protestantism must be looked at in a different light, because it’s a different phenomena from that past.”
Neither MCC or Ut Unum Sint have tried to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes. They are two theological comments looking at the Mystical Body and looking at Protestantism through different lenses. There is no change in our view of the Mystical Body, only in our understanding of Protestantism. But our understanding of Protestantism was never a dogma. It was a theological opinion.
As Pope Boniface said, any pope can move away from a statement or law by a previous pope or even an ecumenical council. He cannot move away from dogma or invent new dogma. The Church’s understanding of Protestantism was not then and is not now dogma.
Again, I repeat. pay attention to Pope Benedict’s words. “a different phenomena”. He’s trying to say, “We’re not sure how it all fits together, but we know one thing, it does not fit the way that we thought it did.”
He provided the wording for UT Unum Sint that Pope John Paul uses when he speaks about incorporating by Baptism. This way, they avoided clashing with previous documents over the term Mystical Body. However, in Latin incorporate breaks down into “in corpus” to include in the body. What body? There is only one.
You can hear the Church’s great sorrow in other documents when she comments about how the Body of Christ has been wounded by the divisions among Christians. This not pure PC. This is the Church expressing real concern about a real break and trying to understand the whole thing. She understands the Mystical Body. Understanding the incorporation is a whole other issue. She believes in the incorporation, because there is only one baptism. We state that in the Creed. How it all works is what had to be clarified. This is the phenomena.
Rather than lose sleep over it, I just opt to let those who are experts in ecclessiology deal with it. Ecclessiology is not my area of expertise. I’m an Ascetical and Mystical Theologian. That’s what I teach. I studied enough Ecclesiology in the seminary to learn how to read the documents, but not enough to evaluate a situation as complex as the Protestant Phenomena. How many Catholics have that kind of theological expertise? Very few. Let’s leave it to the experts to figure it out. It will happen.
I believe that’s what got the SSPX in trouble and why they lost 13 communities that were once affiliated with them and are now reconciled with the Holy See. These communities realized that all of these questions have answers, but not all of the answers are available right now. It would be crazy to wait another generation or two for the answers, when they could be inside the Church working on finding the answers rather than outside the Church or on the fringes demanding answers that the Church cannot give them today.
Fr. Michael Mary (I believe that’s his name) the superior of the Transalpine Redemptorists said this very well. He said, that there were many questions and that he was confident that the answers would be coming, but he did not want his community to be on the outside when they could be on the inside helping to find the answers. He made the decision to reconcile with the Holy See. It cost him 1/3 of his community. They walked away. Don’t ask me where they went, because he does not say.
But I admire his attitude. Let’s not lose sleep over this. This is a situation that is very new and needs to be looked at very carefully. When the Church says carefully, she usually thinks in terms of decades or even centuries not a year or two.
Rather than agonize about the answer to the question of the Protestant Phenomena, I simply deal with what is within my realm of expertise and what is before me. God does not ask me to convert the Church. He asks me to be faithful to the things in front of me.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
