Catholic Dogma and Vatican II on Ecumenism

[Genesis315]

It doesn’t seem to me that either Augustine or even Vatican II are speaking about persons, but about the separated churches and communities as such. It is not a question of whether persons may be saved if they are in good faith, but a question of whether the non-Catholic communities may themselves be a means of salvation. I am saying that Augustine and Vatican II could seem to give different answers to that question.

Obviously a person in good faith can be saved, if he is united to the Catholic Church at least by an implicit desire. But it is only by that Catholic unity, or the desire thereof, that he is saved, and not by the separated church or community of which he is a member. This is what St. Augustine seems to teach, and what VII could possibly be interpreted as denying.

Communities are made up of individual persons with some relationship to one another. Communities are not some entity distinct from the persons that comprise them. The means of salvation are communal–you can’t baptize yourself, you can’t believe in Jesus without hearing him preached by another (Rom. 10:14), etc.

In the quote you provided on the first page, St. Augustine was dealing with essentially a group of first generation heretics who had separated themselves from the Church. As I believe I quoted earlier, he did not consider those separated because they were born into such groups to be heretics (letter 43), so his quote speaking of heretics does not apply to what Vatican II was addressing–those baptized and born into such communities centuries later.

A heretic, as St. Augustine defined it, would not receive the sacraments in an efficacious way–he could not be sanctified as a heretic. The Church still teaches this. The Decree on Ecumenism is not speaking of what St. Augustine called heretics when speaking about those being sanctified, but of those he did not consider heretics. As such, the quotes you provided are talking about different things (as an aside, Florence is quoting St. Fulgentius, who had a similar understanding as St. Augustine).

Being in good faith by definition includes the requisite faith and therefore “desire.” Without such faith/desire, one is guilty of the sin of separation–that is, of heresy, schism, or apostacy. That element is not being excluded as you seem to infer.

As I said at the beginning, sanctification is a communal process. A person in good faith who was baptized by even an obstinate heretic, would be sanctified by that baptism, by that communal act. That communal relationship can therefore truly said to be a means of salvation for the person in good faith.

This does not mean that such communities are a means of salvation in the sense the Catholic Church is, which alone was established by Christ and alone was endowed with the means of salvation. That communal relationship is a means of salvation precisely because the Catholic Church is mysteriously “present and operative” as the Church has phrased it, in that relationship by way of the elements of sanctification belonging to her alone (as St. Ignatius wrote, where Christ is, there is the Catholic Church; and since Christ is present in the sacraments, in the word of God, etc., the Church is present there too in a way as Christ’s mystical body).

As an aside, this idea concerning the mysterious presence of the Catholic Church actually reconciles two currents of Patristic thought: the Cyprianic view that the sacraments are only truly found within the Catholic Church and the view that the sacraments are administered validly by non-Catholics.

 

[The_Maestro]

I still have trouble saying that the true Church of Christ is “present and operative” in non-Catholic communities and churches. Aside from the teaching of St. Augustine and the Council of Florence, there is also Pope Pius IX, whose teaching is quite explicit in the address Iam Vos Omnes:

Nobody will certainly be able to doubt or deny that this Jesus Christ, to the end that the fruits of His Redemption might be applied to all the race of men, has built here on earth, upon Peter, the only Church, which is one, holy, catholic and apostolic; and that He has conferred upon her the power necessary to preserve whole and inviolate the deposit of faith; to transmit this same faith to all peoples, tribes, and nations; to call [elect] to unity in this Mystical Body, through baptism, all men, for the purpose of preserving in them, and perfecting, that new life of grace, without which no one can merit and obtain eternal life; wherefore this Church, which constitutes the Mystical Body, will persist and prosper in her own stable and indefectible nature until the end of the ages, and offer to all Her sons the means of salvation.

Whoever thus gives proper attention and reflection to the situation which surrounds the various religious societies, divided amongst themselves and separated from the Catholic Church - which, without interruption, from the time of Christ the Lord and of His Apostles, by means of her legitimate sacred Shepherds, has always exercised, and exercises still, the divine power conferred upon Her by the Lord - it will be easy to convince [them] that in none of these societies, and not even in all of them taken together, can in some way be seen the one and Catholic Church which Christ the Lord built, constituted, and willed to exist. Neither will it ever be able to be said that they are members and part of that Church as long as they remain visibly separated from Catholic unity. It follows that such societies, lacking that living authority established by God, which instructs men in the things of the faith and in the discipline of the customs, directing and governing them in all that concerns eternal salvation, they continuously mutate in their doctrines without that mobility and the instability they find one end. Everyone therefore can easily comprehend and fully reckon that this is absolutely in contrast with the Church instituted by Christ the Lord, in which the truth must always remain constant and never subject to change whatsoever, deposited as if it were into a warehouse, entrusted to be guarded perfectly whole.

As to faith and desire… I wonder if it is possible to have faith without the desire for Catholic unity. St. Thomas speaks of schism as an offense, not against faith, but against charity, which seeks unity with the Catholic Church. Schism is characterized by the desire to be separate from Catholic unity, according to Thomas. This is the very same unity which is necessary for salvation.

The psychological and spiritual aspects of the possibility of faith without desire is a complicated question, I think, much more so than most of us are aware… I don’t think we can assume that inculpable ignorance is the norm, or else the doctrine of the Church’s necessity for salvation would be reduced, in Pius XII’s words, “to a meaningless formula.”

 

[QNDNNDQDCE]

To my ears, the statement that “non-Catholic communities may themselves be a means of salvation” is a very weak statement indeed. Let me give some examples. If an infant receives baptism outside the Catholic Church and dies in his infancy, what stands in the way of his salvation? In another way, a community may draw a man out of the world by the preaching of the Gospel and cause him, if indirectly, to come into communion with the Catholic Church. These communities can be called “means of salvation” in a meaningful way because they possess elements of the Catholic Church such as the sacraments and pieces of the faith. I do not think the Vatican II documents say that “the Presbyterian Church of America can save you as long you’re the best Presbyterian you can be.” Rather, “the Catholic Church can save even Presbyterians.”