The One True Church

[SedesDomi]

by John Neuhaus

Molloy and others speak of the “full,” “complete,” “total,” and “exclusive” identity between the Catholic Church and the Church of Christ. Such language can easily mislead and is understandably offensive to non-Catholic Christians. The intention, however, is to underscore that the Catholic Church is nothing less than the Church of Christ and to counter any suggestion that the Catholic Church is—albeit the most fully and rightly ordered—only one church among other churches. Again, this is not a matter of boasting or of ecclesial rivalry, which should have no place among followers of Christ.

It is a matter of being as faithful as possible to what Christ intended his Church to be.

Since Christ is manifestly present in other communities, and since Christ, the head, can never be *separated from his Body, the Church, how are we to understand the presence of the Church in these communities that possess “ecclesial elements”? One formulation is offered by John Paul II in his 1995 encyclical Ut Unum Sint: “Insofar as these kinds of elements exist in other Christian communities, the one (unica) Church of Christ has an efficacious presence therein. On this account, the Second Vatican Council speaks of a certain, albeit imperfect, communion. The constitution Lumen Gentium highlights that the Catholic Church knows that ‘for many reasons she is joined’ to these communities in a certain real communion of unity in the Holy Spirit.”

Molloy puts it this way: “Dominus Iesus states not that the Church of Christ exists only in the Catholic Church . . . but that the Church of Christ exists fully only in the Catholic Church. The same document affirms that non-Catholic communions with valid orders and a valid celebration of the Eucharist * are ‘true particular churches.’

Therefore, the Church of Christ can exist elsewhere, though not fully.”…

An implication of that answer is that everyone who is baptized and believes in Christ is Catholic, although in imperfect communion with the Church…

Does this mean that all Christians are members, or partial members, or something like honorary members of the Catholic Church? The Church does not say so. In the 1943 encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi* (On the Mystical Body of Christ), Pius XII addressed the meaning of membership in the Church, but, as Cardinal Dulles writes, Vatican II took a somewhat different approach…

Dulles explains: “Avoiding the term ‘member,’ which had become bogged down in controversy, [the Council] spoke of perfect and imperfect realizations of the sacrament. The sacrament of the Church is fully realized only in the Catholic Church, the visible and grace-filled society in which the bonds of professed faith, ecclesiastical government, and sacramental communion remain fully intact. These bonds belong together insofar as the true Church indefectibly possesses them all. But the bonds are separable in the sense that some may survive in the absence of others. Non–Roman Catholic communities may possess some authentic ecclesial elements and be able to make fruitful use of them as channels of grace.”

I would only offer what I am sure Cardinal Dulles would recognize as a friendly amendment, namely, that such communities do possess such elements and do make fruitful use of them. The Council teaching readily recognizes the evidence of Christian faith and holiness outside the boundaries of the Catholic Church; evidence, one might add, that is sometimes more conspicuous than the evidence found among some who are in full communion with the Church.