The Pope, the Church, and the Paraclete
Posted By Brother André Marie On May 31, 2012
We find ourselves living in exciting times during this season of Pentecost. Groups of Anglicans are gradually coming into the Church, thanks to the Holy Father’s November, 2009, motu proprio, Anglicanorum coetibus. A rapprochement is being negotiated between Rome and the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), which may or may not bring about a canonical approbation for the work of that priestly society founded by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. And while the Holy Father is busying himself with these and manifold other projects ad extra, a major scandal has broken out in the Holy See itself, with sensitive papal correspondences being leaked to the Italian media. To add to the drama, the reports are that “the butler did it,” as papal valet Paolo Gabriele is currently being questioned by the Gendarmerie of Vatican City State, the pope’s police.
I did not say we are living in good times, but in exciting times. And in such times, men can lose their heads, being led about hither and yon by the drama of the moment. The bedrock of Catholic dogma can keep us anchored, and give us a sense of purpose and mission amid these vicissitudes. I would like, then, to return to some of the first principles of our mission at Saint Benedict Center.
The greatest pope of the twentieth century, Pope Saint Pius X [1], condemned the Modernist contention that “the formulas which we call dogma must be subject to these vicissitudes [i.e., those “of varying human conditions”], and are, therefore, liable to change. Thus the way is open to the intrinsic evolution of dogma.” He said this was part of “an immense structure of sophisms which ruin and wreck all religion” (Pascendi Dominici Gregis).
Earlier, Pope Leo XIII had condemned the Americanist [2] approach to dogma, which was similar to what the modernists would teach later, since both heresies were “progressivist” in nature: “certain topics of doctrine are passed over as of lesser importance, or are so softened that they do not retain the same sense as the Church has always held” (Testem Benevolentiae).
And before that, during the reign of Blessed Pius IX [3], Vatican I taught this: “For the doctrine of the faith which God has revealed is put forward not as some philosophical discovery capable of being perfected by human intelligence, but as a divine deposit committed to the spouse of Christ to be faithfully protected and infallibly promulgated.
“Hence, too, that meaning of the sacred dogmas is ever to be maintained which has once been declared by Holy mother Church, and there must never be any abandonment of this sense under the pretext or in the name of a more profound understanding.
“May understanding, knowledge and wisdom increase as ages and centuries roll along, and greatly and vigorously flourish, in each and all, in the individual and the whole Church: but this only in its own proper kind, that is to say, in the same doctrine, the same sense, and the same understanding” (Dei Filius, known as the “Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith,” the last paragraph of which is from the Commonitorium of Saint Vincent of Lerins).
Here at Saint Benedict Center, we accept the true Catholic notion of doctrinal development — a homogeneous development of doctrine which retains the sense of all the ancient dogmas, but adds to them greater clarity and understanding. Centuries of ecumenical councils and papal teachings have given us this. Dom Prosper Guéranger [4] and other great Catholic theologians explain that this kind of orthodox doctrinal development takes place under the influence of the Holy Ghost and by the authoritative dogmatic interventions of the Church’s magisterium. This true doctrinal development will never contradict either tradition or what the Church has taught us from her highest levels. With the Church, we at Saint Benedict Center reject the heterogeneous development of doctrine, condemned by Pope St. Pius X as the “evolution of dogma.”
Keeping in mind what we have just shown from the popes regarding dogma not being subject to evolution, I present here three infallible dogmatic definitions, from popes and councils, that bind the consciences of all Catholics. Please note that these teachings cannot and will not evolve or adopt a sense different from that which they had when they were defined by the Church.
•“There is but one universal Church of the faithful, outside which no one at all is saved.” (Pope Innocent III, Fourth Lateran Council, 1215.)
•“We declare, say, define, and pronounce that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff.” (Pope Boniface VIII, the Bull Unam Sanctam, 1302.)
•“The most Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes and preaches that none of those existing outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics, can have a share in life eternal; but that they will go into the eternal fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels, unless before death they are joined with Her; and that so important is the unity of this ecclesiastical body that only those remaining within this unity can profit by the sacraments of the Church unto salvation, and they alone can receive an eternal recompense for their fasts, their almsgivings, their other works of Christian piety and the duties of a Christian soldier. No one, let his almsgiving be as great as it may, no one, even if he pour out his blood for the Name of Christ, can be saved, unless he remain within the bosom and the unity of the Catholic Church.” (Pope Eugene IV, the Bull Cantate Domino, 1441.)
If anyone were to say, concerning these or any other infallible teaching, that, “the Church does not teach that anymore,” then that person, however well-meaning he may be, is espousing the heresy of Modernism [5].
Yes, this teaching is a “hard saying”; yes, it is a challenge. Much ink has been spilt, and many trees have given their lives, in the effort to soften its jagged edges. All these resources might be spared if we would attend to the wisdom of Father Frederick Faber, the great convert and founder of London’s Brompton Oratory (properly known as the Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary). Here he is, considering the theories that that were becoming popular in his day regarding this teaching:
If the Precious Blood had been shed, and yet we had no priesthood, no Sacraments, no jurisdiction, no sacramentals, no mystical life of the visible unity of the Church — life, so it seems, would be almost intolerable. This is the condition of those outside the Church; and certainly as we grow older, as our experience widens, as our knowledge of ourselves deepens, as our acquaintance with mankind increases, the less hopeful do our ideas become regarding the salvation of those outside the Roman Church. We make the most we can of the uncovenanted mercies of God, of the invisible soul of the Church, of the doctrine of invincible ignorance, of the easiness of making acts of contrition, and of the visible moral goodness among men; and yet what are these but straws in our own estimation, if our own chances of salvation had to lean their weight upon them? They wear out, or they break down. They are fearfully counterweighted by other considerations. We have to draw on our imaginations in order to fill up the picture. They are but theories at best, theories unhelpful except to console those who are forward to be deceived for the sake of those they love — theories often very fatal by keeping our charity in check and interfering with that restlessness of converting love in season and out of season, and that impetuous agony of prayer, upon which God may have made the salvation of our friends depend” (The Precious Blood, page 77).
Dear Readers, Saint Luke’s inspired account of Pentecost is the story of unity — true unity, saving unity in the Catholic Church. By undoing the division of Babel, the Paraclete draws our race into the only unity that God Himself has revealed to man. The Spirit of Pentecost is the Soul of the Church; He makes it One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic. The Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, the breath of love of the Father and the Son, is the same Holy Ghost that binds the faithful together in charity and that strengthens us singly in the practice of every virtue.
Whatever chaos happens during these “exciting times,” let us cleave to the Spirit of Truth, and beg His seven-fold gift; for it is His dwelling in us that assures we will not be orphans (cf. John 14:17). Our Lady, Spouse of the Holy Ghost, pray for us!
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Article printed from Catholicism.org: catholicism.org
URL to article: catholicism.org/ad-rem-no-186.html
URLs in this post:
[1] Pope Saint Pius X: catholicism.org/piusx.html
[2] Americanist: catholicism.org/americanism-heresy.html
[3] Blessed Pius IX: catholicism.org/our-glorious-popes.html/9
[4] Dom Prosper Guéranger: catholicism.org/dom-gueranger.html
[5] Modernism: catholicism.org/what-did-st-pius-x-mean-when-he-called-modernism-the-synthesis-of-all-heresies.html
FATHER FEENEY AND THE IMPLICITUM VOTUM ECCLESIAE
by Brian W. Harrison
November 2010
www.rtforum.org/lt/lt149.html
Part A. Who Is In Fact ‘Outside The Church’?
Introduction
It is now over sixty years since the so-called “Boston Heresy Case” involving Fr. Leonard Feeney (1897-1978) shook the U.S. Church and sent more than a few tremors round other parts of the Catholic world. The case eventually influenced the doctrinal teaching of Vatican Council II’s principal document, the 1964 Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium. Dealing with the prospects for eternal salvation of those who are sincerely unaware of the truth of Catholicism, the Council references a rather low-key1 censure of Feeney’s doctrine, sent fifteen years earlier by the Vatican’s Holy Office to Archbishop (later Cardinal) Richard Cushing of Boston.2
The key point in this doctrinal ruling was that the ancient dogmatic formula, “No salvation outside the Church (Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus)”, must not be understood to exclude from salvation all those who die as non-Catholics (that is, without consciously professing the Roman Catholic faith). The reason is that some of these persons, the Holy Office affirmed, developing Pope Pius XII’s teaching several years earlier in the 1943 Encyclical Mystici Corporis,3 may in fact be joined to the true Church by a link – seemingly tenuous, but sufficient for salvation – that consists in a merely implicit and unconscious desire (implicitum votum Ecclesiae) to enter the Catholic fold. This desire, however, will have to be such as includes supernatural acts of faith and charity.4
In spite of Vatican II’s footnote confirming this Holy Office decision, the controversy which flared as a result of Fr. Feeney’s severe interpretation of the aforesaid dogma has never really been laid to rest. At least, not in the United States, where small but convinced and articulate groups of Catholics continue to defend and propagate Feeney’s distinctive teaching. This can be adequately summarized in the following proposition postulating two requirements for reaching eternal life:
To reach eternal salvation, it is necessary (though not sufficient): (a) to have been baptized sacramentally5; and (b) to die sincerely professing the Catholic faith and one’s own personal submission to the Roman Pontiff.
Most of those who adopt this position are, however, rather less insistent and uncompromising about (a) than they are about (b). That is, most would say (as Fr. Feeney himself did after 1952) that in their personal opinion there is no such thing as a saving ‘baptism of desire’ or ‘baptism of blood’; but that they would not condemn as certainly unorthodox the contrary opinion, to wit, the consensus of approved theologians and papally-endorsed catechisms over the last thousand years to the effect that these two substitutes for sacramental baptism can certainly be sufficient for salvation in determined circumstances. It seems that in recent debates over “Feeneyism” in traditional Catholic circles, the lion’s share of the cut-and-thrust has been devoted to issue (a) – that is, to arguing for or against the validity of ‘baptism of desire’ and ‘baptism of blood’,6 – even though, for Feeney’s followers, this has usually been the more ‘negotiable’ of the two key issues. The present essay, in focusing attention on (b), will seek to redress the balance somewhat.
While most Catholic traditionalists7 do not agree with Feeney’s distinctive doctrine, those who do include, amongst others, communities of male and female religious in New England and California operating in a certain institutional continuity with Fr. Feeney’s ‘Saint Benedict Center’ (hereafter ‘SBC’), which was originally located near Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The canonical status of these defenders of the rigorist understanding of ‘the salvation dogma’ varies. One or two such groups – not institutionally connected at all with the SBC communities – are at least materially schismatic, since they not only denounce various Vatican II teachings as heretical, but also deny that any of the post-conciliar Popes has been a true Successor of Peter. Others are canonically regularized or at least tolerated by Church authority. For the two-part doctrinal thesis placed in bold type above, while not in accord with the Church’s contemporary magisterium,8 has never been formally condemned as contrary to infallible Church teaching, and (presumably for that reason) is not being treated by the Vatican as an offence that excludes one from membership in the Church, or even from reception of the Sacraments.
This writer’s participation in many written and oral discussions over the years has left him with the impression that while only a minuscule proportion of Catholics accept Fr. Feeney’s thesis regarding ‘the salvation dogma’, very few of the remaining vast majority are well equipped to refute it. If they are aware of it at all, they most often dismiss it out of hand as being so obviously narrow-minded and incredible in the modern ecumenical age that it is not even worth two minutes’ serious consideration. I myself tended to take that attitude until a decade or so ago. Then, as a theology professor, I started to receive requests for help from one or two other priests who were being besieged by anxious lay people primed with ‘Feeneyite’ literature. These priests frankly admitted their uncertainty as how best to help reassure such perplexed Catholics that the arguments found in such literature are fallacious. The fact is, Fr. Feeney was definitely no fool. He had by the 1940s developed a reputation as one of America’s most brilliant and learned Jesuits, and for that reason was seen as well equipped to defend the faith at the liberal intellectual hub of the nation: Harvard University and its vicinity. Thus it is that those few modern mainstream Catholics who take time out to read carefully the case presented by Feeney and his present-day followers are often taken aback to find themselves much more challenged than they expected to be.
For instance, many modern Catholics assume that Feeney adopted the shocking view – clearly incompatible with explicit magisterial teaching from the time of Blessed Pope Pius IX onwards – that some people, including some who have never even heard of the Catholic Church, will be punished eternally by God for failing to comply with a divine command of which they are inculpably and invincibly ignorant. That is so flagrantly unjust that even a child would realize an all-good and merciful God could never act thus, right? Right, indeed. However, on reading what Feeney and his supporters actually say, one finds that this is a mere caricature of their position. They do not claim that those who die invincibly ignorant of Catholic truth will be sent to Hell as a punishment for failing to join the true Church. Rather, they say, all such invincibly ignorant persons will always in fact die with other unrepented mortal sins, committed with full knowledge and consent, on their conscience; and it will be for those sins that they are damned.
In the view of certain Catholics with a laudable desire to be strong papal loyalists, it would really not matter too much even if the magisterium had in fact contradicted itself over whether non-Catholics can be saved. I am referring here to those who incline toward a kind of naïve magisterial positivism, according to which we should all treat as certainly true, and thus as at least de facto infallible, whatever happens to be the latest doctrinal statement to emanate from Rome, regardless of who said it and regardless of the forum, type of document, and choice of words in which it was presented. Heedless of the teaching of Vatican II itself,9 such folks – often deficient in their formal theological training but now able to attract large audiences via Internet blogs and other modern media – tend to place on the same level of authority, for all practical purposes, ecclesiastical statements of quite varying degrees of weightiness. These can range all the way from pronouncements of an ecumenical Council down to isolated and unemphatic statements in minor post-conciliar papal allocutions, together with any statement that emanates from any Vatican dicastery, or is proposed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church,10 or is found even in one of those recent papal theological treatises and book-length interviews which expressly disclaim any kind of magisterial authority. The default position for this sort of simplistic conservatism is basically that if someone in the modern Vatican said it or approved it, it’s true – and you’d better believe it! Roma locuta est! But (we may ask) what if it seems incompatible with the previous magisterium? “No problem!” – we will be assured. “Don’t you know that’s called ‘development of doctrine’? If there’s some real incompatibility, that just means the old pre-conciliar teaching is now superseded by the new one. We faithful Catholics must simply change step doctrinally when Holy Mother Church herself changes step!” (It was of course fundamental for Bl. John Henry Newman, who pioneered the theology of doctrinal ‘development’, that any genuine development must always be in harmony with, never contrary to, the Church’s already-existing, traditional doctrine.)
Well now (we might wonder), if the old teaching, taught for century after century, turned out to be so unreliable, why should we feel very confident that a new and contradictory teaching ‘superseding’ it will be more reliable? But (leaving that problem aside for the moment) Fr. Feeney and his disciples will now in any case press our modern magisterial positivists a little harder by asking how they will handle the situation if the old teaching fulfilled the requirements laid down by Vatican II itself (LG 25) for infallible – not just ‘authentic’ – doctrine? As, for instance, when the Pope and all the bishops, in a solemn profession of faith, propose something to be “firmly believed, professed and taught” by all Catholics? How about the following doctrinal assertion, for example, laid down in precisely those terms by the Ecumenical Council of Florence in 1442, in its Bull of Union for the Copts and Ethiopians, Cantate Domino?
None of those situated outside the Catholic Church – not only pagans but also Jews, heretics or schismatics – can become sharers in eternal life, but will go to the eternal fire ‘prepared for the devil and his angels’ (Mt. 25: 41) unless they become attached to her before the end of their life.11
By this point in the discussion, the modern mainstream Catholic (positivist or otherwise) will often be feeling a certain uneasiness, but will often reply along the lines that while, of course, we can never deny the dogma that “outside the Church there is no salvation”, we must now interpret it rather differently from the way our forefathers did, so as to mitigate its severity to some extent. His adversary, however, will certainly not concede defeat at this point, and will be quick to quote the doctrine – one which will come as a puzzling surprise to many mainstream Catholics, but was nevertheless infallibly defined by Vatican Council I – that Catholic dogmas simply cannot be ‘reinterpreted’ in this way. The Council declared, “If anyone shall say that, in accordance with the progress of science, it can happen that dogmas proposed by the Church must be given a meaning different from that which the Church has understood and still understands, let him be anathema”.12
In this case (our ‘Feeneyite’ friend will continue) we are looking at the dogma “Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus”. And we learn from Florence that the meaning according to which “the Church has understood” (and therefore “still understands”) this dogma is that no one who dies as a pagan,13 Jew, heretic or schismatic can be saved. Now, what many mainstream Catholics are saying these days is, in effect, that “in accordance with the progress of science” – in this case psychological, historical, sociological and anthropological science – we now know that many wonderful and good people go right through life and die as totally sincere pagans, Jews, Muslims and non-Catholic Christians, and so simply could not be doomed to eternal torment by a good and merciful God. Therefore (says Mr. Mainstream) we must now reinterpret those four apparently harsh dogmatic words, “Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus”, so as to allow that at least some who die as pagans, Jews, heretics or schismatics can in fact be saved. But surely (Mr. Feeneyite will conclude triumphantly) this benign “reinterpretation” of the dogma is a clear case of changing its previously accepted meaning! And that is precisely what is anathematized by Vatican I.
This is usually the point in the discussion at which it is Mr. Mainstream, rather than his adversary, who pulls out of the argument with a perplexed shrug of the shoulders. If he does not himself start to harbor gnawing doubts as to whether Fr. Feeney was perhaps right after all, in spite of the seemingly gloomy prospect his doctrine presents, he will turn his own attention to other matters, dismissing the problem as one to which someone else – maybe some orthodox post-conciliar theology professor? – can no doubt find a satisfactory solution. Perhaps he will actually refer the matter to one of those post-conciliar theology professors, asking for help. That is precisely how the issue started turning up intermittently in my own Inbox; and after several years I did not feel I could responsibly shrug it off by postponing it indefinitely, or by trying to shunt the problem still further down (or up) the line.
I. What was right, and what was wrong, in Fr. Feeney’s teaching?
So, rather than pass the buck, I shall bite the bullet. I will consider in this essay whether contemporary magisterial teaching, including John Paul II’s express negation of Fr. Feeney’s thesis,14 can be read in a ‘hermeneutic of continuity’ with the severe teaching of Pope Boniface VIII and the Council of Florence, understanding this medieval teaching in the same sense as that intended by its authors and promulgators.
I believe it can be read thus, but not if we go by what seems to be the most popular interpretation of the 1949 Holy Office Letter, the Vatican II documents, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and John Paul II’s Redemptoris Missio. All of these modern magisterial documents are inconclusive if we search them for an unambiguous answer to the following question: Is salvation possible for those who die not just as non-Catholics, but as non-Christians? That is, can someone reach eternal life who dies without any explicit belief in Jesus Christ as God and Savior? While these modern magisterial documents stop short of answering this question clearly, it cannot be denied that what they say, in conjunction with what they significantly fail to say, leans in the direction of an affirmative answer. However, after much study and reflection, I myself have come to think – in accord with the teaching of St. Thomas – that the correct answer to this question must be negative. And Leonard Feeney of course agreed with the Angelic Doctor on that point.
This raises the question of to what extent Fr Feeney’s stern (and therefore unpopular) views may have been well founded. It seems only fair to precede my criticism of his position by calling to mind certain points on which I think he was right. First, he deserves credit for protesting vigorously against the rising tide of indifferentism, which is now even more widely diffused than it was in his time. An apparently large majority of professing Catholics now see no urgent need at all to persuade or exhort others to join the original and true Church of Jesus Christ; for they appear to hold that those of any religion or none will reach Heaven by nothing more than just being sincere and decent-living folks. Our modern funerals – with white vestments expressing liturgical jubilation – take on the air of instant canonization ceremonies for all deceased Catholics, practicing or non-practicing, orthodox or dissident. The pains of Purgatory are ignored or glossed over, while Hell (if one believes in it at all) is presumed to be reserved for only a few monsters of iniquity: maybe the occasional Hitler, Stalin, drug lord or mafia don. Fr. Feeney certainly deserves praise for his loud and clear protest against that sort of mentality, especially in this age wherein a one-sided emphasis on ecumenism and interreligious dialogue has very often overshadowed good old-fashioned apologetics and evangelization.
Not many Catholics, however, apart from Fr. Feeney’s avowed disciples, will feel inclined to join me in the second accolade that I would award him – at least, not before reading my reasons for granting it, which – who knows? – may perhaps change some minds. I refer here to the vote of thanks which I think the late paladin of Saint Benedict Center deserves for his firm belief and insistence that nobody who dies as a non-Christian – that is, without at the very least an explicit (although perhaps only rudimentary) belief in the Trinity and in Jesus Christ as the Incarnate Lord and Redeemer – can be saved. As mentioned above, I have in recent years come to agree with this classical Thomistic teaching. However, to defend this thesis, which is now very unpopular (because at first sight shockingly pessimistic), and which some Catholics, indeed, are quick to pronounce contrary to modern magisterial teaching, would require another complete essay.15
The rest of this one will be dedicated to a different aspect of Feeney’s position, namely, what he taught about the eternal destiny of those dying as non-Catholic Christians, including those who have been validly, sacramentally, baptized. Here again, for the reader’s convenience, are his two main controversial doctrinal claims:
To reach eternal salvation, it is necessary (though not sufficient): (a) to have been baptized sacramentally; and (b) to die sincerely professing the Catholic faith and one’s own personal submission to the Roman Pontiff.
We have already explained in the Introduction that this essay will not address systematically the denial of ‘baptism of desire’ implied by claim (a). Enough ink has already been spilled over that issue, and so we shall turn instead to examine claim (b). This was always Fr. Feeney’s main bone of contention, and the one which prompted the 1949 Holy Office Letter to the Archbishop of Boston.
As is evident, the interpretation of ‘Outside the Church, no salvation’ expressed in (b) means not only that all who die as non-Christians go to the eternal fire, but also that the same grim fate awaits all those, no matter how apparently devout, who die as professing Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, and other non-Catholic Christians, even if they are validly baptized.16 It was this thesis that the Holy Office was censuring when it insisted that an “implicit desire for the Church” – implicitum votum Ecclesiae – can sometimes be sufficient for the salvation not only of persons who never during their life formally enter the Church (i.e., who are neither raised Catholic nor ever ritually received into her fold as converts), but also of those who die without even consciously or explicitly intending to become Catholics and submit to the Pope. Here is the main passage of the Letter that Feeney objected to:
[In order] that one may obtain eternal salvation, it is not always required that he be actually incorporated into the Church as a member, but it is necessary that at least he be united to her by will and desire. However, this need not always be explicit, as it is in catechumens; for when a person is handicapped by invincible ignorance, God accepts also an implicit desire, so called because it is included in that good disposition of soul whereby a person wishes his will to be conformed to the will of God.17
It can readily be seen that Fr. Feeney’s requirement (b), as we have formulated it above, does not rule out as unavailing for salvation an explicit “will and desire” for the Church – for instance, on the part of a dying person who was validly baptized in a Protestant denomination and who wants to become a Catholic, but has no opportunity to go through the process of formal reception into the Church by a priest, complete with sacramental confession and first Communion. For it is clearly possible to profess the Catholic faith sincerely, and to make an inward commitment to be obedient to the Pope, prior to any such formal and sacramental reception; and Feeney would by no means have classified such a person as being “outside the Church” and doomed to Hell simply because these external (ceremonial and liturgical) procedures could not be carried out prior to death. But where he certainly drew a sharp line in the sand was in reaction to the Vatican’s insistence that even an implicit desire for the Church – a disposition excluding any conscious intention or desire whatsoever to accept distinctively Catholic doctrines or submit to the Pope – could be sufficient for salvation. He was never able to see how someone with that sort of disposition could plausibly or fairly be described as being located anywhere other than “outside the Church” – extra Ecclesiam– and therefore, according to the dogma, heading toward perdition.
Leonard Feeney therefore boldly branded this Holy Office teaching on the implicitum votum Ecclesiae as heretical. My purpose in this paper is to show that he was mistaken in doing so.
II. Defining our terms
In order to explain more completely my disagreement with Fr. Feeney, I will need to define the relevant terms as clearly as possible. The key expression needing clarification in this discussion is of course “Extra Ecclesiam”. (There is little or no controversy among Catholics as to what is meant by “nulla salus”.18) What exactly does it mean to be “outside the Church”? Or, more precisely, what did the Fathers of Florence mean by this expression, since it is their meaning, according to Vatican I’s anathema-laden definition, which must forever be maintained as the only true meaning of the dogma. SBC advocates19 often seem to assume that its meaning is self-evident, and so do not trouble to spell it out. One who does, however (although only in passing), is the late Brother Robert Mary, a tertiary (lay) member of SBC’s Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. He tells us that “Father Feeney was preaching a defined dogma of the Church: the absolute necessity of visible membership in the visible Church for salvation”.20 Neither of the words “visible” or “membership”, however, occurs in the Florentine exposition of the dogma. The author has added them on his own initiative, assuming them to be obviously understood and intended by the Council. But once we begin to inquire a little more closely as to what, in the minds of the Florentine Fathers, are the necessary and sufficient conditions for being situated “outside the Church”, it soon becomes apparent that Bro. Robert Mary’s assumption is very questionable.
Indeed, so is another related assumption that appears to be taken for granted in SBC writing, namely, that every human person, at any given moment, is either inside or outside the Church. At first sight that seems to be just plain common sense; but I shall argue that in fact, the authentic tradition of the Church recognizes, at least implicitly, a third and intermediate status. Using an analogy with a physical church building, we can consider the plan of a great basilica such as St. Peter’s in Rome. When you pass from the square between the enormous stone columns of the façade you find yourself in a large portico, in front of the massive doors that lead into the nave of this mighty temple. Now, while you are standing in the portico, are you inside or outside St. Peter’s Basilica? The truth is that neither alternative accurately describes your position. You can’t really be said to be either inside or outside the Basilica, because its boundaries are not officially defined with sufficient sharpness for such a clear-cut judgment to be made. Likewise, one can be in a spiritual situation that is really neither “inside” nor “outside” the Church founded by Christ. From now on I shall refer to such persons as being located in porticu Ecclesiae – in the portico of the Church. And the reality of this intermediate ‘portico’ situation has an important logical consequence: the maxim “outside the Church there is no salvation” does not imply, as it seems to at first sight, that “only inside the Church is there salvation”.
Now, being “inside” the Church clearly means being one of her members. So let us consider this concept of “membership” in the Church. What exactly does it mean? And is it in fact an “absolute necessity . . . for salvation”? Significantly. the words “member” or “membership” occur nowhere in the relevant passage of Cantate Domino. However, there can be no doubt that the Florentine Fathers, along with the Church in all ages, understood that a necessary condition of membership in the Church during the present life21 is having received sacramental baptism – baptism of water. Pius XII, in his encyclical Mystici Corporis of 1943, confirmed this in giving an authoritative definition of what membership in the Church involves:
The only persons really to be included among the members of the Church are those who have received the washing of regeneration, who profess the true faith, and who have neither separated themselves wretchedly from the unity of the Body nor been cut off from her by legitimate authority for the commission of grave offences.22
This coincides with another classical account of what membership in the Church, that is, fully belonging to her, consists of. St. Robert Bellarmine defines the true Church as:
. . . the congregation of men bound together by the profession of the same Christian Faith, and by the communion of the same Sacraments, under the rule of the legitimate pastors and especially under the one Vicar of Christ in earth, the Roman Pontiff. From this definition it can easily be ascertained which men belong to the Church and which do not.23
Bellarmine goes on to point out that in virtue of the second element in the above definition (“communion of the same Sacraments”), “catechumens and excommunicates are excluded [from “belong[ing] to the Church”], because the former are not [yet] admitted to the communion of the Sacraments and the latter have been cut off from them”.24 In line with the same constant Tradition, Vatican Council II affirms “the necessity of the Church which men enter through baptism as through a door”.25 (Once again, the analogy with St. Peter’s Basilica is helpful: only when you pass through those giant doors at the inner side of the portico are you truly inside the Basilica.)
Since this is the constant, ancient Catholic faith, it is clear that, for Pope Eugene IV and the Fathers of Florence, catechumens, who had not entered that ‘door’ of the Church which is baptism, could not be “included among [her] members”.
But does this mean that the Council of Florence judged all catechumens to be extra Ecclesiam exsistentes – “situated outside the Church”? If so, then it would be teaching that all who die as catechumens are certainly destined for the eternal fire, for this is precisely the fate infallibly proclaimed by the Council for all those who die extra Ecclesiam. But it would in fact be totally implausible to attribute such a severe teaching to the Council of Florence. By the time the Council met, there had been a consensus for many centuries that the desire for baptism on the part of a catechumen, if informed by theological faith and charity, will be sufficient for salvation if he/she dies unexpectedly before being able to receive the sacrament. Even more assuredly would a ‘baptism of blood’ save a catechumen who was martyred under persecution.26 This was already the common, approved teaching of theologians, including such great doctors as St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure. Indeed, Pope Innocent II, three centuries before Florence, in an official response to the Bishop of Cremona, had replied “without hesitation”, citing two great Fathers and Doctors, Saints Augustine and Ambrose, to the effect that desire for baptism could be sufficient to save.27 Then, in 1206, Innocent III responded to an inquiry from another bishop as to whether a certain Jew was validly baptized who, in danger of death, had tried to administer the sacrament to himself. While replying in the negative, the Pope affirmed that if such a Jew had died immediately after such an attempt, he would nevertheless be saved “because of faith of the sacrament” (propter sacramenti fidem), even though he had not truly received “the sacrament of faith” (fidei sacramentum).28 And in the century after Florence, the Catechism of the Council of Trent, promulgated by the authority of Pope St. Pius V, was to teach that, in regard to adults preparing for baptism, the Church does not regard the administration of this sacrament as being so urgent as in the case of newly-born infants, because:
. . . should any sudden accident render it impossible for adults to be cleansed in the saving water, their intention and determination to receive it, and their repentance from their previous ill-spent life, will suffice them to grace and justification.29
Given this context of long-standing, unanimous pre- and post-Florentine theological and magisterial teaching in favor of ‘baptism of desire’, it is clear that the Fathers of this Council must be presumed to have accepted this doctrine. The conclusion that they did so is corroborated by their own text: for catechumens are conspicuous by their absence from the Council’s list of those designated as being extra Ecclesiam. If the Fathers of Florence had wished to stigmatize such persons as being “outside the Church”, then that list, logically, should have read: “not only pagans but also Jews, heretics, schismatics and catechumens”. For this last group plainly does not fall into any of the previous four categories of persons who are said to be “outside the Church”.
The conclusion is clear. The Council of Florence certainly does not accept catechumens as being inside the Church – that is, as her members, persons who have ‘entered’ her and fully belong to her. But it is equally clear that the Council does not judge catechumens to be outside the Church, for that would imply they are all destined for the fires of Hell if they die while in their catechumenal state, and the Florentine Fathers neither believed nor taught that. In other words, the Fathers were tacitly accepting and implying the existence of the intermediate condition we are calling in porticu Ecclesiae – neither inside nor outside the Church. Being sacramentally unbaptized, therefore, is not a sufficient condition for being located extra Ecclesiam. Nor is it a necessary condition, since many validly baptized persons, namely, heretics and schismatics, are indeed extra Ecclesiam, as the Florentine profession of faith itself asserts.
However, it is clear that, for Florence, being in the state of sin is indeed a necessary condition for being outside the Church. For only those dying without sanctifying grace (and therefore without charity) will be excluded from Heaven; and the Council declares that all those dying outside the Church will be excluded from Heaven. On the other hand, the lack of sanctifying grace and charity is certainly not a sufficient condition for being outside the Church; for many of her baptized members – orthodox and practicing Roman Catholics – commit mortal sins and so lose grace without thereby placing themselves extra Ecclesiam.
III. What does it mean to be ‘outside the Church’?
Let us present these thoughts, and other related considerations, in the schematic form of a list of questions-and-answers that seek to discover what constitutes being “outside the Church” (in the sense that excludes from salvation)? What, according to Catholic theology, are the necessary and sufficient conditions for being ‘extra Ecclesiam’?
1. Being unbaptized? This is clearly not a necessary condition of being in this unfortunate state, since baptized persons can also be outside the Church. But neither is it sufficient; for after initial doubts and disputes among the Fathers, the ordinary magisterium has taught clearly since medieval times that salvation is possible for catechumens and other unbaptized folks who desire baptism. But their salvation would be impossible, according to the dogma we are studying, if they were outside the Church.30 So this (the state of being sacramentally unbaptized) is neither necessary nor sufficient for being ‘extra Ecclesiam’.
2. Being in the state of original or mortal sin (i.e., lacking supernatural charity)? This is certainly not a sufficient condition; for many persons in mortal sin remain within the Church. On the other hand, if you are outside the Church – and so, according to the dogma, are excluded from Heaven if you die at that moment – you certainly lack charity. For nobody dying with sanctifying grace and the charity that goes with it will be excluded from Heaven. So this (being in the state of sin) is necessary, but not sufficient, for being ‘extra Ecclesiam’.
3. Lacking supernatural faith? This is not necessary, because formal schismatics and excommunicated persons can be outside the Church while retaining the theological virtue of faith. However, since the Church is first and foremost the community of the Christian faithful – the Christifideles – anyone who lacks the virtue of faith (whether culpably or inculpably) is certainly outside that community. This is sufficient, but not necessary, for being ‘extra Ecclesiam’.
4. Being visibly unconnected (sacramentally or sociologically) to the Church’s organized structures? Not sufficient, because Catholic teaching has explicitly recognized ever since the third century that infants validly baptized in, and being raised in, heretical/schismatic communities are at least for a few years members of the true Church – although not visibly so. While a theologian will say they are Catholic, a sociologist would classify them as non-Catholic; for they are plainly and visibly part of the Methodist, Episcopalian, Greek Orthodox (or whatever) community where their parents take them to church. Indeed, I know a leading SBC member who also acknowledges that adult oriental Christians living in areas far away from Constantinople during the initial period after the formal East-West schism of 1054 would not really have been extra Ecclesiam if they were unaware that the churches they continued to attend were now part of a new denomination whose leaders had separated it from Rome. So this lack of a visible, organizational, connection to the Catholic Church is not in itself sufficient to place you outside of her. Nor is it necessary, because occult formal heretics and apostates, who secretly lack the supernatural virtue of faith, are really (in God’s sight) outside the Church even though they remain visibly (‘materially’) within her, perhaps hypocritically participating in – or even administering – the sacraments. This is neither necessary nor sufficient for being ‘extra Ecclesiam’.
5. Being unentitled to receive the (post-baptismal) sacraments? No, this is an effect, not a cause, of being outside the Church.
6. Lacking an explicit will to be subject to the Roman Pontiff? Not necessary, because a person excommunicated for certain offences could still have such a will. Neither is such a lack sufficient in itself to put you outside the Church. After all, baptized Catholic babies and inadequately catechized Catholics – children or adults – can lack this explicit will; yet not only are they not outside the Church; they are fully inside her, as true members. (The Holy Office ruled in 1703 that missionaries may baptize adults in danger of death provided they believe explicitly at least in the Trinity and Incarnation, i.e., even if they haven’t yet learned about the papacy.31) This too is neither necessary nor sufficient for being ‘extra Ecclesiam’.
Now, I believe Fr. Feeney would have agreed – at least at the time of the 1949 Holy Office censure32 – with my evaluation of the above six conditions and dispositions. But he would have parted company with me about the seventh, which touches the point the Holy Office was then most concerned about:
7. Having an explicit will not to be subject to the Roman Pontiff? This is not necessary as a condition for being outside the Church, for the same reason disposition #6 above is not necessary. But Fr. Feeney and his SBC supporters would claim that this disposition, which characterizes nearly all non-Catholics,33 is certainly sufficient to put you extra Ecclesiam. Now, while at first sight this claim may appear plausible, or even obviously true, things are not really so clear-cut. For a conscious, explicit and habitual disposition not to submit to the Pope can in itself be psychologically quite compatible with (though of course it is not always accompanied by) an implicit habitual disposition to submit to the Pope.
Here, I believe, we have finally unearthed the root of the discordance between Leonard Feeney’s view and the recently developed teaching of the Church’s magisterium. His unduly gloomy prognosis regarding the eternal destiny of all who die with an explicit will to remain independent of papal authority derives, I would suggest, from his failure to appreciate that this explicitly negative attitude is not in itself incompatible with a true, though implicit and unconscious – will to accept papal authority wholeheartedly. This implicit disposition necessarily exists in the heart of every believer in the Trinity and Incarnation who is explicitly, sincerely and habitually disposed to obey Jesus Christ wholeheartedly, even if, through anti-Catholic literature, preaching, catechesis or upbringing, that person has been misled into believing honestly that Christ is in fact telling his disciples to disregard the Pope’s claim to be his Vicar on earth. This disposition #7 can therefore sometimes be very close to #6; for in both cases we’re talking about persons who would be willing to submit to the Roman Pontiff consciously and explicitly if they knew that Christ himself wants them to do so. The difference is that the poorly catechized Catholics discussed in #6 are true members of the Church while the sincere non-Catholic Christians contemplated here in #7 are not. In any case, we may conclude (in this case without Fr. Feeney’s agreement) that disposition #7 is neither necessary nor sufficient as a condition for being outside the Church. While it is clear that nobody thus disposed can be inside the Church (intra Ecclesiam), some who are thus disposed can be in porticu Ecclesiae rather than extra Ecclesiam. For how could we plausibly presume that everyone with this attitude to papal authority is in mortal sin despite (a) being validly baptized, (b) believing with supernatural faith in the Trinity and Incarnation, and (c) being explicitly and wholeheartedly disposed to obey every precept of Christ? And as we have seen (cf. #2 above), being in the state of mortal sin is, for adults, a necessary condition of being extra Ecclesiam: nobody in the state of grace is outside the Church.
Does this mean the 1949 Letter is implying that at least some non-Christian theists – Jews, Muslims, etc. – may also be located in porticu Ecclesiae rather than extra Ecclesiam? Some might maintain that it would be arbitrary and inconsistent to stop short at affirming only the thesis of the italicized sentence in the previous paragraph. They might argue that the Holy Office’s appeal to an underlying ‘good will’ logically implies a similar but much broader thesis in which the words “every believer in the Trinity and Incarnation” in that sentence are replaced by “every believer in God”, with the words “Jesus Christ” and “Christ” likewise being replaced simply by “God”. In truth the Holy Office does not imply this kind of ‘big tent’ ecclesiology. But neither does it reprobate, implicitly or explicitly, that ecclesiology. Rather, it tacitly leaves the question open for further discussion. This is clear from the fact that the Letter goes on to teach that not every kind of implicitum votum Ecclesiae is salvifically efficacious, but only that which is informed by the theological virtue of charity and accompanied by supernatural faith.34 And whether any non-Christian can in fact possess these theological virtues is a separate and rather complex question which the Holy Office does not address in this document.35
8. Having an explicit and culpable will not to be subject to the Roman Pontiff? Here, finally, we can return to agreement with Feeney and the SBC by virtue of the two words that distinguish #7 from #8. Even though having the latter disposition is plainly not necessary as a condition of being outside the Church (for there are other defects that will produce the same result), it is most certainly a sufficient condition. And Fr. Feeney would of course be the first to agree. Indeed, on this point, the harmony is already transparent between the two councils, Florence and Second Vatican. The latter, in explaining the dogma Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus, affirms: “Those could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter her [i.e., submit to the Roman Pontiff] or remain in her”.36 In short, disposition #8 is not necessary, but is indeed sufficient, for being outside the Church and, therefore, on the road to perdition.
The above eight-point analysis should make it clear enough that, contrary to what we might have expected a priori, it is not immediately obvious what exactly the traditional magisterium meant by being ‘outside the Church’. Our enquiry has shown that the position assumed tacitly by the Council of Florence in regard to catechumens is a chink, as it were, in Fr. Feeney’s armor. It punctures a hole in his iron-clad dichotomy, namely, his claim that, according to the traditional magisterium, all who are not members of the Church – i.e., baptized Roman Catholics in good standing – are ipso facto outside of her fold (and, for that reason, on the road to damnation). And once it is recognized that Tradition admits, at least implicitly, the existence of an intermediate condition that is neither ‘inside’ nor ‘outside’ the Church, the way has been opened logically for the more recent doctrinal development – legitimate (we would argue) and in substantial continuity with Tradition – which allows us to assign not only catechumens, but certain other non-members of the Church as well, to this theological locality we are calling the ‘portico’ of the Church. In short, the seed that has grown into Vatican II’s category of persons in “partial communion” with the Church had already been sown quietly at Florence.
Our analysis has also shown that there are two sufficient conditions for being extra Ecclesiam: 1) a lack (whether culpable or inculpable) of supernatural faith; and 2) an explicit and culpable will not to be subject to the Roman Pontiff. (Each of these two dispositions can exist either independently or together with the other.) Also, we have seen that there is one (and only one) necessary condition for being extra Ecclesiam, namely, lack of supernatural charity. A logically equivalent way of stating these conclusions is to say that all who are outside the Church lack charity, while all who lack theological faith, along with all schismatics who retain faith while culpably refusing subjection to the Roman Pontiff, are outside the Church.37
It is worth remarking, finally, that the foregoing discussion helps us to see that being truly separated from the Church of Christ – being outside her in the sense that excludes from salvation – is essentially an inner spiritual condition (though of course it can be outwardly manifested with words and deeds). It’s not something that any sociologist can easily and reliably discover empirically, using a simple yes-or-no question in an opinion poll. (“Excuse me, Sir/Ma’am: Are you a Roman Catholic?”) For some who answer ‘Yes’, even without consciously lying, will in God’s sight and in objective reality be outside the Church, namely, those who have lost supernatural faith, or who refuse to allow papal authority any impact on their own behavior, but who still identify to some extent with Catholicism for merely natural reasons (social convenience, family or cultural tradition, nostalgia, etc.). Conversely, some of those who truthfully answer ‘No’ to our opinion poll question will not really be outside the Catholic Church. Some of these explicit nay-sayers, unbeknown to themselves, will actually be in porticu Ecclesiae rather than extra Ecclesiam.
(To be continued in the next issue of Living Tradition)
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Endnotes
1 Although approved by Pope Pius XII, the Letter was never published in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis.
2 Cf. note 19 to Lumen Gentium, 16. This 1949 Holy Office Letter is also referenced in no. 847 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
3 Cf. Denzinger (Dz) 2290, found in the more recent Denzinger-Schönmetzer (DS) as no. 3821.
4 Cf. DS 3869-3872. This Holy Office Letter is not included in any earlier edition of Denzinger.
5 Fr. Feeney’s position eventually became still more rigorous than that for which he was censured by Rome in 1949. From 1952 until his death he no longer held that “baptism of desire” could be sufficient for salvation, even in the case of a catechumen who dies during preparation for sacramental baptism with an explicit desire and intention to join the Roman Catholic Church. As regards “baptism of blood” – the violent death of a catechumen who voluntarily sacrifices his life for love of Christ and the faith during persecution – Feeney and his followers do not exactly deny that this would be sufficient for salvation. Rather, they deny that such a thing has ever happened in fact, or ever could happen. They argue that God’s Providence will infallibly see to it that any catechumen with such heroic faith and charity will always receive the waters of baptism prior to being slain by the persecutor. This of course requires them to explain away all testimonies of catechumens being martyred before baptism as historically unreliable, and in fact false. In the case of Fr. Feeney himself, this post-1952 severity regarding baptism – cf. (a) in our main text above – was held as a personal opinion, which he said he would be prepared to renounce if the Church expressly passed judgment against it. He consistently maintained, however, that the denial of requirement (b) above is heresy.
6 Cf., for instance, Thomas A. Hutchinson, Desire and Deception: Is the Church Necessary? (Arcadia, CA: Charlemagne Press, 1994); Fr. François Laisney, Is Feeneyism Catholic? The Catholic Meaning of the Dogma ”Outside the Church There Is No Salvation” (Kansas City, MO: Angelus Press, 2001); Bro. Robert Mary, M.I.C.M Tert., Father Feeney and the Truth About Salvation: a Critique of His Critics (Richmond, NH: Saint Benedict Center, 1995).
7 The word traditionalist is being used here, in accordance with its usual contemporary sense, to designate those believers who are distinguished from other Catholics by their dissatisfaction with official, as well as unauthorized, changes introduced into the Church as a result of Vatican Council II, and in particular, by their marked preference for the traditional Latin Mass (now called the “extraordinary form” or usus antiquior, of the Roman Rite) over the post-conciliar reformed Roman liturgy (the “ordinary form” or novus ordo).
8 Pope John Paul II, in an authoritative statement that is more explicitly ‘anti-Feeney’ than those found in either the Catechism or the conciliar texts, teaches in the Encyclical Redemptoris Missio that salvation “is not granted only to those who explicitly believe in Christ and have entered the Church” (art. 10). While this clearly contradicts both of the propositions (a) and (b) in bold type above, it does not contradict the following shorter proposition: “Salvation is granted only to those who explicitly believe in Christ”. While the latter thesis has also been very much out of favor in recent times, it expresses the view of nearly all the Fathers, St. Thomas Aquinas, many other approved theologians over the centuries, and (both last and least) the present writer. It is compatible with John Paul II’s assertion in RM, 10, because the falsity of proposition P, “Only those who fulfill conditions A and B are saved”, does not imply the falsity of P1, “Only those who fulfill condition A are saved”. For the falsity of P might be due exclusively to its being mistaken in asserting that one must always fulfill B in order to be saved – something which P1 does not assert.
9 Lumen Gentium states that in assessing the weight or binding force of statements made even by the Roman Pontiff when he is not speaking ex cathedra, we must, in order to discern correctly his “mind and intention”, take into account such factors as “the character of the documents in question, . . . the frequency with which a certain doctrine is proposed, [and] the manner in which the doctrine is formulated” (art. 25).
10 In the Apostolic Constitution Fidei Depositum, John Paul II declares the Catechism to be a “firma regula” for teaching the faith (Catechismus Catholicae Ecclesiae, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997, p.5). The standard English version translates firmam regulam as “a sure norm”. But “sure” is virtually synonymous with “certain”, which in turn suggests infallibility or a 100% guarantee of always being right. Neither classical nor ecclesiastical Latin dictionaries give “sure” or “certain” as one of the meanings of firmus. A less ‘absolute’ adjective such as “reliable” or “trustworthy” would be a better translation, since that would leave room for the possibility of there being a few debatable or questionable statements among the Catechism’s 2865 articles. In his little book Introduction to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger considered the question of the CCC’s doctrinal authority and pointed out that, as an essentially pastoral document – a compendium of already-existing Catholic doctrine – it does not have the inherent authority to hand down new magisterial judgments: “The individual doctrines which the Catechism presents receive no other weight than that which they already possess” (p. 26). It follows that any doctrinally novel affirmation that may be found in the CCC (such as the statement in #1261 encouraging us to hope for the salvation of infants who die without baptism) should not be seen as a new intervention of the authentic magisterium that would require the assent of all Catholics.
11 “[Sacrosancta Romana Ecclesia] firmiter credit, profitetur et praedicat, ‘nullos extra catholicam Ecclesiam exsistentes, non solum paganos’, sed nec Iudaeos aut haereticos atque schismaticos, aeternae vitae fieri posse participles; sed in ignem aeternum ituros, ‘qui paratus est diabolo et angelis eius’ [Mt 25: 41], nisi ante finem vitae eidem fuerint aggregati” (Dz 714 = DS 1351). A footnote in Denzinger indicates that Council is citing the above words “nullos . . . paganos” from a work by St. Fulgentius of Ruspe, a 6th-century North African Father of the Church.
12 Dz 1818 = DS 3043.
13 “Pagans” were evidently understood here to include Muslims, according to common 15th-century Christian terminology.
14 Cf. note 8 above.
15 Briefly, my position is not that the implicit faith in the Savior which sufficed for salvation before the coming of Christ suddenly lost this saving efficacy after his coming. Rather, I would argue that after the promulgation of the Gospel at Pentecost, implicit faith simply became extinct. That is, God no longer infuses the theological virtue of faith – a supernatural gift that goes beyond a merely natural knowledge of God – in a form that produces merely implicit acts of faith in the Redeemer. Rather, every act of theological faith is now an explicit and conscious act of faith in Jesus Christ. (Cf. Jn 17: 3: “This is eternal life: to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”) I do not see how the contrary thesis can honestly be reconciled with the infallible Florentine teaching that all pagans and Jews are outside the Church and so are damned if they die as pagans and Jews. For if some of them had an implicit supernatural faith in Christ despite their explicit adherence to a non-Christian religion or philosophy, it would simply not be true to classify all of them as being outside the Church. But (it will be objected) does this not imply, intolerably, the certain damnation of all the countless millions of unevangelized people round the world who have lived and died after Pentecost, but before missionaries reached their lands? No, it does not imply that. Modern clinical observations and countless recent testimonies of ‘near-death experiences’ are teaching us that people can appear to bystanders to be totally unconscious or even dead (with zero brain activity registering on hospital instruments) while in fact they were in fact consciously undergoing very vivid and sometimes life-changing experiences. Such evidence is a remarkable reminder that Almighty God is perfectly capable, in a dying person’s last moments, of bestowing upon him/her graces and illumination that enable a saving act of explicit and repentant Christian faith (‘baptism of desire’) that may well be completely undetectable to bystanders at the deathbed. This should not be confused, of course, with the idea of “deathbed conversions” on the part of religiously indifferent loose-livers who have knowingly but carelessly been living gravely sinful lives. Sound spiritual writers have long warned us that the true last-minute repentance of such habitually immoral and presumptuous souls is an extraordinary grace that is probably quite rare. Rather, we are talking here principally about persons who have hitherto been in invincible ignorance of Gospel truth, but who have persevered to the end in striving to seek truth and follow the natural law in accord with their own conscience (cf. Rom. 2: 14-16). Even before receiving faith and justification, such persons will have been “not far from the kingdom of God” (Mk 12: 34).
16 Nevertheless, a certain nuance is needed here. My understanding is that Fr. Feeney and his followers would exempt from the second part of requirement (b) – the need for personal submission to the Roman Pontiff – not only children who die before attaining a sufficient use of reason, but also such older persons as might die before having had a chance to learn enough about the existence and claims of the Roman Pontiff to be capable of making any conscious and responsible decision either to comply with those claims or to reject them. To take an obvious example, I am sure that no follower of Fr. Feeney would claim that the defectively catechized slaves baptized by St. Peter Claver would all go to Hell for failing to recognize papal authority. We read that this holy priest, zealous for the salvation of the many captives constantly arriving from Africa at the port of Carthagena, would usually have time only to give these wretched folk rudimentary catechesis about the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Savior’s redemptive death and resurrection. If they indicated belief in these basics of the Gospel and showed repentance from sin, he would then baptize them. But they would then usually be sold off and taken away from the port before there was time for any further catechesis. (See also Part B, section III, 6, over note 31.) Allowing for the salvation of St. Peter Claver’s slave converts, however, logically raises the question, for Fr. Feeney’s supporters, as to whether another similarly situated slave, catechized identically and validly baptized by, say, a Methodist or Lutheran rather than a Catholic missionary, could also be saved? It would surely be implausible to say that, of two people who die with identical spiritual dispositions, one will go to Heaven and the other to Hell just because the latter had the misfortune to be evangelized and baptized by the ‘wrong’ sort of missionary. But if Fr. Feeney’s disciple concedes that both slaves go to Heaven, he thereby also concedes in principle that some adults can be saved who (using words in their normal, accepted sense) die as Methodist or Lutheran Christians rather than Roman Catholics.
17 “Quandoquidem ut quis aeternam obtineat salutem, non semper exigitur, ut reapse Ecclesiae tamquam membrum incorporetur, sed id saltem requiritur, ut eidem voto et desiderio adhaereat. Hoc tamen votum non semper explicitum sit oportet, prout accidit in catechumenis, sed ubi homo invincibili ignorantia laborat, Deus quoque implicitum votum acceptat, tali nomine nuncupatum, quia illud in ea bona animae dispositione continetur, qua homo voluntatem suam Dei voluntati conformem velit” (DS 3870).
18 This writer has, however, read a theological proposal to ‘develop’ (reinterpret?) the concept of “salvation” itself by broadening it to include the natural happiness of Limbo. It is argued that this would enable us to harmonize the new Catechism’s allowance of hope for the “salvation” of unbaptized infants (cf. CCC, #1261) with the traditional Catholic doctrine that they are certainly excluded from the beatific vision. We would then, in effect, have a kind of division into first- and second-class salvation. The main trouble with this proposed solution to the problem in question is that the Council of Florence has defined that the souls of those dying with original sin only (souls which could only be those of unbaptized infants), also “go down to Hell”: “Diffinimus . . . Illorum autem animas, qui in actuali peccato mortali vel solo originali decedunt, mox in infernum descendere (Dz 691, 693 = DS 1302, 1306, emphasis added). And it would seem confusing, and possibly unorthodox, to try to redefine Limbo, traditionally understood to be the ‘edge’ or ‘border’ of Hell, as being in effect the ‘edge’ or ‘border’ of Heaven. Indeed, this proposed development of doctrine would involve the strange-sounding claim that one can attain “salvation” and be in “Hell” at the same time.
19 I shall avoid in the rest of this essay the pejorative terms “Feeneyism” and “Feeneyite” for those who subscribe to the Saint Benedict Center doctrinal thesis summarized in bold type in the Introduction and in section I above. For such labels are of course as annoying to those with whom I wish to be in dialogue here as the label “Lefebvrist” is to those of the Society of St. Pius X and their supporters.
20 Bro. Robert Mary, op.cit., p. 219 (emphasis added). (See note 6 above for first reference.)
21 All Catholics are agreed that in Heaven there are now many saints – at the very least, those righteous souls who lived and died before the promulgation of the New Law of Christ at Pentecost – who were never baptized.
22 “In Ecclesiae autem membris reapse ii soli annumerandi sunt, qui regenerationis lavacrum receperunt veramque fidem profitentur, neque a Corporis compage semet ipsos misere separarunt, vel ob gravissima admissa a legitima auctoritate seiuncti sunt” (Dz 2286 = DS 3802).
23 Cited in Robert Mary, op. cit., p. 145.
24 Ibid.
25 Lumen Gentium, 14 (emphasis added).
26 Some theologically naïve traditionalists claim that ‘baptism of blood’ for catechumens is actually ruled out by the same paragraph of the Florentine profession of faith when it affirms that even those “who shed their blood for Christ” will not be saved if they die outside the unity of the one Church. But of course, this claim begs the very question at issue, namely, whether catechumens are in fact “outside the Church”. It is clear from the literary context, and from the safe assumption that the Fathers of Florence accepted the centuries-old Catholic consensus in favor of baptism of blood, that those they refer to here are not catechumens who are killed out of hatred for Christ, but schismatics and heretics who are killed for that reason. For if the latter sacrifice their lives without contrition for their culpable rejection of Catholic faith and/or unity, their apparently laudable and salvific death will in reality be motivated by pride or some other merely natural motive, rather than supernatural charity. While we might think that such a scenario seems psychologically improbable, its possibility in principle is recognized by St. Paul, whose words the Florentine Fathers no doubt had in mind here: “And if I should distribute all my goods to feed the poor, and if I should deliver my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing” (I Cor. 13: 3).
27 Cf. Epistle Apostolicam Sedem (c. 1140), Dz 388 = DS 741).
28 Cf. Epistle Debitum Officii Pontificalis, August 28, 1206 (Dz 413 = DS 788).
29 Part II, Ch. II, Q. 35. The Catechism here implicitly rejects Fr. Feeney’s post-1952 reading of Trent, to wit, his subtle but implausible view that while the Council undeniably allows a desire for baptism to be sufficient for justification, it does not allow that such desire can suffice for eternal salvation. He claimed that if a catechumen dies before baptism, that very fact should be seen as evidence that, while he may at an earlier stage have been justified (in the state of grace) through his desire for the sacrament, he certainly lost that grace by committing some new mortal sin which remained unrepented at death. It is true that the Catechism here speaks of the intention to receive baptism as sufficient for “grace and justification”, rather than for “salvation”; but the authors are clearly taking it for granted that the catechumen’s state of grace can last until death even without his ever receiving the sacrament. For the “sudden accident” they speak of – one which renders reception of the sacrament “impossible” – is obviously a fatal accident. And if they had agreed with Fr. Feeney’s position, they would plainly not have been teaching – as they do here – that the baptism of catechumens is a less urgent matter than that of infants.
30 Often heard coming from Fr. Feeney’s more theologically deficient disciples is an appeal to the Council of Trent’s fifth canon on baptism, which they mistakenly think teaches that the desire for baptism can never be sufficient for salvation. The canon asserts, “If anyone shall say that [sacramental] baptism is optional (liberum), that is, not necessary for salvation, let him be anathema” (Dz 861 = DS 1618). Such folks misunderstand this canon, neglecting the crucial word “optional”. The canon anathematizes only those radical Protestants who were saying that true (sacramental) baptism is not necessary for salvation in any sense at all, not even by necessity of precept (cf. Part B, note 49). In other words, the anathema is aimed only at the Socinians and others who were saying that baptism is ‘free’ or ‘optional’ in the same way the sacrament of marriage is: i.e., that each Christian has the right to choose freely whether to receive it or not.
31 Cf. Dz 1349 = DS 2380-2381. Cf. also note 16 above.
32 As we have noted (cf. note 5 above), Feeney from 1952 onward departed further from common Church teaching by arguing against ‘baptism of desire’. So from that time onward he would not have agreed with our thesis (cf. #1 above) that being sacramentally unbaptized is not a sufficient condition for being outside the Church.
33 In order to avoid possible confusion, it seems opportune to recall and emphasize that the term “non-Catholic” is not being used here, and should never be used, as a synonym for “one who is outside the Catholic Church” in the theological sense intended by the Council of Florence. Rather, we are using “non-Catholic” in that ‘sociological’ or publicly verifiable s
FATHER FEENEY AND THE IMPLICITUM VOTUM ECCLESIAE
by Brian W. Harrison
January 2011
www.rtforum.org/lt/lt150.html
Part B. Reading Cantate Domino, Unam Sanctam, and the 1949 Letter
in a Hermeneutic of Continuity
IV. Who are the “heretics” and “schismatics” Florence refers to?
In Part A of this essay we have elucidated and articulated more precisely the principal point of conflict between the distinctive Feeney-SBC thesis and the magisterium’s explicit teaching since the 1940s. Both sides agree that no one can be saved outside the Church; but they are not in full agreement as to what the conditions are for being outside the Church. Specifically, SBC affirms, and the contemporary magisterium denies (albeit implicitly), that all those with an explicit and conscious will not to be subject to the Roman Pontiff are outside the Church (cf. section IV, #7 above). Our remaining task in this study is one which might look rather daunting: we need to show that the contemporary magisterium’s position on this point does not contradict the relevant infallible pronouncements of the Council of Florence and Pope Boniface VIII.
Now, Fr. Feeney and his SBC followers would probably say that I am trying to ‘square the circle’ here, so that my efforts to harmonize the medieval magisterial statements with the 1949 Letter are inevitably doomed to failure. Specifically, they would most likely claim that I am hoist on my own petard in trying to defend the sufficiency for salvation of an “implicit desire for the Church” in the hearts of non-Catholic Christians – persons who by definition explicitly refuse submission to the Roman Pontiff. For I have already admitted that we can never, on pain of Vatican I’s anathema, give a new and different meaning to the words of any Catholic dogma. But (my SBC critics are likely to argue) the words “heretics” and “schismatics” in the Florentine profession of faith were certainly understood by the 15th-century Fathers of that Council to include all separated Eastern Christians as well as the pre-Reformation ‘Protestants’ of their day (Hussites, Waldensians, Lollards, and other sectarians). There was no benign ecumenical talk back then of such folks being our “separated brethren”! Therefore (my critics will conclude) the Council of Florence, in consigning to the eternal fire all those dying as “heretics” and “schismatics”, included among these sons of perdition all persons who die professing membership in any non-Catholic community whatsoever, that is, all who die with an explicit will not to be subject to the Roman Pontiff. If this conclusion is correct, the very idea that a non-Catholic’s “implicit desire” for the Church could be sufficient for his or her salvation is heretical. And that is precisely the grave charge leveled boldly by Leonard Feeney at the 1949 Holy Office Letter.1
To answer this objection, we must distinguish carefully between: (a) a judgment as to the definition of the word “heretic” (or “schismatic”); and (b) a judgment as to whether a particular person or group under consideration comes under that definition. Judgment (a) is about what is meant by the sins of heresy and schism respectively, and is, as such, doctrinal in character. But (b) is about who, among the individuals and groups we may be observing and assessing, should be judged (or at least presumed) guilty of those sins. It is therefore not a doctrinal judgment, but rather, a prudential judgment about a question of contingent fact. Now, in order to comply with Vatican I’s insistence that the original meanings of Catholic dogmas must always be retained, we need only retain the same judgment (a) as was made by the Fathers of Florence. That is, we must retain their own ‘job description’ of a heretic or a schismatic, but not necessarily their practical, prudential judgment as to who in fact fits that description.
So what did the Florentine Fathers understand by the term heretic? Neither their document nor any other magisterial statement of that era includes a formal definition of the word. But we can safely assume that they, like most of their learned Catholic contemporaries, would have wanted to follow the two authorities who at that time were generally considered the greatest doctors of the Church: St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. The latter teaches that heresy is the sin, springing from a bad motive (“pride or covetousness”), of one who “intends to assent to Christ” (i.e., wants to be a Christian), but who “corrupts Christian faith” by adhering obstinately to his own false opinion on a certain matter instead of accepting the real teaching of Christ proposed by the Church.2 Equally important for our purposes, however, is the fact that Thomas goes on to cite Augustine, in a passage later enshrined in the Decretals, as an authority endorsing his own view that the simple fact of holding – and even defending – a false doctrine is not sufficient to make one a heretic, no matter how grievous the error may be; for it is precisely the conscious, obstinate and presumptuous pitting of one’s own doctrinal judgment against that of the authority established by Christ that constitutes this sin:
As Augustine says (Ep. xliii), and we find it stated in the Decretals (xxiv, qu. 3, can. Dixit Apostolus), “By no means should we accuse of heresy those who, however false and perverse their opinion may be, defend it without obstinate fervor, and seek the truth with careful anxiety, ready to mend their opinion when they have found the truth”, because, to wit, they do not make a choice in contradiction to the doctrine of the Church.3
Now, is it really plausible today to assert or presume that, of all the hundreds of millions of professing Orthodox, Anglican, Protestant and other non-Catholic Christians around the world, there are none who hold and defend their erroneous beliefs “without obstinate fervor”? None who “seek the truth with careful anxiety, ready to mend their opinion when they have found the truth”? But the moment we admit there are such sincere truth-seekers among their ranks, we are admitting they are not “heretics” in the sense we must presume the Fathers of Florence gave to that word. Similar considerations will apply in determining what they meant by “schismatics”. For St. Thomas (again, relying on the authority of Augustine) emphasizes that the sin of schism consists in a “rebellious” act, by which one “obstinately scorns the commandments of the Church and refuses to submit to her judgment”.4 The Catechism of the Council of Trent, which in the next century simply resumed the centuries-long ordinary magisterial teaching which we must assume was also that of the Florentine Fathers, also stresses rebelliousness against known authority as an essential element in both schism and heresy. It does so with a striking military analogy: among those “excluded from the pale of the Church,” says the Catechism, are “heretics and schismatics, because they have severed themselves from the Church, nor do they belong to the Church any more than deserters belong to the army from which they have deserted”.5 But how realistic is it to classify those Protestant, Anglican or separated Eastern Christians who have never in their life been aware of the Catholic Church’s God-given authority, much less actively served under her banner, as having “severed themselves” from the Church, thereby becoming ‘deserters’ from her ranks?
At this point, however, our SBC friends may insist that this unawareness doesn’t get these non-Catholics off the hook. They will point out that in the very passage of the Summa wherein St Thomas, citing Augustine, accepts that not all who hold and defend heretical doctrines are really heretics, the Angelic Doctor is quick to add that “if anyone were to obstinately deny [such doctrines] after they had been defined by the authority of the universal Church – an authority which resides chiefly in the Sovereign Pontiff – he would be deemed a heretic”.6 “But this,” my critics will argue, “is precisely what all Protestants and other non-Catholic Christians in fact do! They know very well there is a Pope in Rome who expects his teaching to be obeyed; but they simply do not accept his authority to teach them, and so obstinately continue to deny or doubt many things that popes have defined to be true. So all Protestants do qualify as heretics according to St. Thomas’ criteria (which Harrison is attributing, reasonably enough, to the Fathers of Florence). The only baptized people holding opinions contrary to revealed truth who do not qualify as heretics are therefore sincerely mistaken Catholics, that is, believers who already accept with docility the teaching authority of the Pope, and so are ready to correct their views once they realize these have been ruled out by the Holy Father.”
Now, this looks at first sight like a pretty powerful objection. And we must admit that it has been found persuasive not just by Fr. Feeney and his disciples, but by many other Catholics, including saints and approved theologians, prior to the twentieth century. “Feeneyism” scarcely began with Father Feeney! And it seems to have been strongly insinuated in the canon law of Holy Mother Church herself, who for centuries (right up till 1983, in fact) called all non-Catholic Christians “heretics” or “schismatics”, and treated them as such in her legislation.7
However, the objection can be answered – and the modern magisterium thus defended from the charge of heresy – by taking into account the distinction we mentioned above between the two kinds of judgment made by Aquinas and the Fathers of Florence: the doctrinal judgment (a) as to the definition of “heretic” and “schismatic”, and the prudential judgment of fact (b) as to who fitted that definition. I concede that the said medieval Church authorities probably did regard all adult members of non-Catholic communities as true heretics and schismatics, and as therefore being extra Ecclesiam and on the road to perdition. But I insist at the same time that since this was a (b)-type judgment on their part, we can disagree with it – especially in trying to assess the status of today’s non-Catholics – without falling foul of Vatican I’s anathema against changing the original meaning of any Catholic dogma.
In fact, it is not too difficult to understand why those mediaeval Church authorities were more ready than most of us are today to discern sinful “obstinacy” and “rebelliousness” – and, therefore, true heresy and schism – in the attitude of baptized non-Catholics as such. For the authority of the Catholic Church (and thus, of the Pope) to settle religious disputes was, during those “Ages of Faith”, such a huge, central, and fundamental feature of the whole prevailing world-view and culture that it must have seemed – and perhaps in reality was – difficult for anyone baptized and raised in such a culture to cast off that authority in completely good faith. It must have seemed – and perhaps was – reasonable to assume that any such dissident would hear deep-down murmurings of conscience accusing him of sinful pride and rebelliousness in pitting his own judgment against the august authority that the whole surrounding culture sternly and constantly reminded him was the voice of God on earth.
After all, rejecting papal authority in favor of one’s own individual judgment was a perfect recipe for religious anarchy. And in medieval Christendom it was much easier to see that fact – and also to see that such anarchy is thoroughly undesirable – than it is in modern Western society. Desensitized after several centuries spent under a socio-political umbrella that shelters multiple coexistent Christian denominations, we have now, as a society, baptized this chaotic anarchy with the bland name of “religious pluralism”, and have come to see it as an instance of normal and healthy progress, rather than of pathological decline from the revealed norm of a Catholic polity that recognizes the kingship of Christ. (After all, isn’t such ‘pluralism’ a cornerstone of democracy and a guarantee of individual liberty?) Those of us who are converts to the faith8 can testify from experience that for modern Protestants right across the liberal-evangelical-fundamentalist spectrum, the co-existence of many Christian denominations or “churches”, while theoretically acknowledged as falling short of the biblical ideal of Christian unity, is for practical purposes taken for granted as something normal, natural and inevitable – pretty much like the co-existence of many different countries, languages, styles of music, or ice cream flavors. From that perspective it is precisely “Rome” that appears as the renegade – the black sheep in the Christian fold – by virtue of her “arrogant” claim to be the one and only true Church.
And let us recall the full radicality of this Protestant critique. It is not that the Southern Baptists (let us say) object to the aforesaid claim simply because they consider their own denomination, rather than “Rome”, to be the one true Church. That would basically be the same kind of objection that many claimants to this or that national throne have made over the centuries against rival claimants: “It is not you, but I, who am the rightful king!” No, the Protestant position cuts much deeper. It is like objecting to someone’s claim to the throne of England on the grounds that no such throne exists! It’s like protesting that anyone at all who claims to be England’s rightful ruler is ipso facto an impostor and potential tyrant whose pretensions must be firmly resisted! For the common position now shared by Protestants is precisely that no single Christian denomination may claim to be the Church founded by Christ, and, therefore, that no leader of any one denomination may dare claim the authority to make doctrinal or governing decisions that bind all Christians. Rather, it is said, each denomination should respectfully recognize many (or even all) of the others as being true, that is, real, “churches”, and so limit itself to making the modest claim of being preferable to the others in one way or another – for instance, by virtue of possessing what it believes is a better understanding of Scripture. In other words, the different organized “churches”, according to this ecclesiology, are seen as being in this respect pretty much like banks, schools, cars, brands of toothpaste, or any other sorts of commodities and services. It is considered legitimate to promote one or other as being of better quality than the rest; but just as it would be outrageous and beyond the pale for Wells Fargo to claim seriously that none of its competitors is truly a bank, or for General Motors to claim that nobody else makes real automobiles, or for Colgate ads to proclaim that what you’ll get in tubes of other brands is not just inferior toothpaste but fake toothpaste – so Protestants right across the liberal-conservative spectrum consider it theologically outrageous and beyond the pale for any single Christian denomination (read: Roman Catholicism) to claim that it is the one and only real Church.9
Now, pre-Reformation churchmen like Aquinas and the Fathers of Florence would have seen this sort of pluralistic, ‘multi-church’ ecclesiology not only as manifest heresy, but as something approaching lunacy. For they saw what should always be obvious to Christians (but now, sadly, is not), namely, that denying the existence of any earthly authority empowered to make final and binding decisions for the one Church of Christ (including interpretations of Scripture) was just as plainly a recipe for religious anarchy as denying the existence of England’s throne would have been for civil anarchy. To help us appreciate how natural it was for our medieval Catholic forebears to be highly skeptical that any Christian could in good conscience reject papal authority altogether, we need only reflect on how skeptical we ourselves would be about the sincerity of anyone who today claimed ‘conscientious objection’ against one of the authorities that our society still believes are legitimate and necessary. For instance, who among us would take seriously a baseball player or cricketer who, not content to lodge a complaint about some particular decision of an umpire, boldly proclaimed his “sincere belief” that no umpire’s decision should ever be binding, since it is (in his opinion) “presumptuous” for any one man ever to try and “impose” his own judgment on the players in the field? And would we not all roll our eyes dismissively at any man who “sincerely” insisted not just that the latest Supreme Court decision is in his opinion unjust, but that no court in the nation should be considered ‘supreme’ over others, or be so “arrogant” and “autocratic” as to claim the final and binding word in any legal dispute?
In short, the medieval European situation was one in which it seemed obvious to just about everybody that there was, and could only ever be, one single and visibly organized Church of Christ. So it seemed equally obvious that no Christian could reasonably expect to be regarded as sincere and in good conscience if he challenged in its entirety the authority of the Roman Pontiff, the only possible guarantor of the Church’s visible unity.
Today, however, the social and cultural situation in the former Christendom is radically different. As we have noted above, centuries of increasing religious pluralism have made it entirely credible – indeed, morally certain – that there are indeed many non-Catholic Christians (believers, on God’s authority, in at least the Trinity and Incarnation) whose doctrinal errors and separation from the Church’s unity are not due to a sinfully proud, scornful, obstinate, or rebellious attitude. Therefore, good-willed modern non-Catholics of this sort do not fit the Council of Florence’s ‘job description’ of heretics and schismatics. But that in turn means the Council has abstained from teaching that such folks are extra Ecclesiam. On the other hand, not being members of the Church, neither are they intra Ecclesiam. So it makes sense to see them as being in that same kind of ‘portico’ situation – neither inside nor outside – in which the Florentine Fathers were already tacitly locating catechumens. In the light of these considerations, we can see as a harmonious development of the Florentine teaching, not as a contradiction of it, the Church’s recent recognition, in magisterial statements beginning in the 1940s, that even some who explicitly deny papal authority can nevertheless be linked to the Church by an unconscious or implicit desire which is sufficient for their salvation.
V. Pope Boniface VIII on submission to the Roman Pontiff
Finally, we need to consider whether the 1949 Holy Office Letter and other relevant statements of the modern magisterium are also compatible with Boniface VIII’s ex cathedra teaching in the Bull Unam Sanctam (US) of 1302. I accept that US, like any magisterial document dealing with human behavior, must indeed be interpreted literally – for such documents do not belong to any kind of poetic, fictional or ‘symbolic’ literary genre – and also that it may not be given a sense different from that which Boniface himself intended. But I do not agree with Fr Feeney and the SBC that a literal reading of US, any more than of Cantate Domino, requires us to see all non-Catholic Christians as being outside the Church and on the road to Hell. Its true literal meaning may not be obvious at a first and superficial reading, especially if the reader fails to take into account the historical and literary context of the declaration.
What Boniface “declares, proclaims, and defines” is that “for every human creature (omni humanae creaturae), it is altogether necessary for salvation to be subject to the Roman Pontiff (subesse Romano Pontifici . . . omnino esse de necessitate salutis”).10 The relevant point for present purposes, I would argue, is that Pope Boniface himself is intending to include in his teaching the possibility of a merely implicit “subjection” or “submission” to the Roman Pontiff.
Let me elaborate. Boniface VIII was obviously aware that the expression “every human creature” includes small children, who, as he knew perfectly well, cannot yet know or will anything at all with respect to the Roman Pontiff. However, if they are validly baptized, the infused supernatural habits of faith and charity make these children implicitly and potentially subordinate to the Successor of Peter: they predispose such a child to consciously act in obedience to all revealed precepts, including those concerning the Pope, as soon as he or she can learn and understand the obligation to do so. Moreover, since Boniface was presumably not following St. Cyprian’s ancient error (rejected by the magisterium a thousand years earlier), he would have accepted that even infants validly baptized in heretical and schismatic communities are likewise implicitly subject/subordinate to his authority as Peter’s Successor. In Unam Sanctam he does not of course address the question of how long this implicit disposition will last once the child born and baptized into these non-Catholic communities reaches the age of reason. (When that moment arrives, the child will certainly begin – as indeed will the children of Catholic parents prior to being adequately catechized – in a state of inculpable ignorance regarding his/her duty to obey the Pope in religious matters.)
Now, since Boniface’s ex cathedra definition, literally and correctly understood, already includes in principle the sufficiency for salvation of a merely implicit subjection to the Pope, the way was left open for the doctrinal development expressed in the twentieth-century magisterial documents which allow for the possibility of this merely implicit subjection on the part of adults as well as infants. For, as we have already argued,11 there is not necessarily any relevant difference between children and adults in this respect.
A short personal testimony may serve to illustrate the point here. I am a convert from Protestantism, brought up in a strongly Calvinist, anti-Catholic family and social environment. In making my first confession at age 26, prior to being received into the Church, I had plenty to confess, but did not mention among my sins my previous lack of subjection to the Roman Pontiff. That was because I was not conscious before God of any culpability in that respect. Ever since early adolescence I had had a basic knowledge of who the Pope was and of the fact that he and his Church demanded the subjection of all Christians to his authority. And so, as a young Presbyterian who had practically never heard or read anything good about the Pope and his religion, I certainly had at that stage a conscious, explicit and habitual will not to be subject to his authority. But as soon as I became convinced, after several years of intermittent reading and praying on this subject, that I needed to subject myself to the Pope, and that failure to do so would be mortally sinful disobedience to Christ himself, I took steps to join the Catholic Church. I don’t believe I ever sinfully resisted the Holy Spirit’s promptings during my journey of faith. For in my earlier youth it simply never even crossed my radar screen that the papal so-called ‘Antichrist’ – any more than Buddha or Krishna or Mohammed – could possibly have any claim on my allegiance. I really think I was then invincibly ignorant in that regard.
Finally, it is also worth noting the historical and literary context of the definition at the end of US, that is, of the Pope’s insistence on the “absolute” or “utter” necessity for salvation of this subjection (omnino . . . de necessitate salutis). Bearing in mind this context, we can discern that what the Pope has first and foremost in mind is the necessity of precept to that effect, even though his words could also extend to the idea of a necessity of means as regards an at least implicit subjection.12 The whole controversy with King Philip IV of France which prompted this document arose from the king’s insistence that, as head of a Catholic state, his will could justly prevail over that of the Pope in certain matters involving the Church in his own country. Boniface affirms in the second-last paragraph of US:
For this [papal] authority, although it is given to man and is exercised by man, is not human, but rather divine, and has been given by the divine Word to Peter himself and to his successors in Christ. The Lord acknowledged Peter to be a firmly grounded rock, telling him personally, “Whatsoever you shall bind”, etc. (Mt 16: 19). Therefore whoever resists this power so ordained by God “resists the order of God Himself”(Rom. 13: 2) unless, like a Manichaean, he pretends that there are two origins – which We judge false and heretical, because, as Moses testifies, God created heaven and earth “in the beginning”, not “in the beginnings” (Gen. 1: 1)13
In the light of this, and of the whole preceding controversy, it is apparent that what is uppermost in Boniface’s mind, in the ex cathedra definition that directly follows the above words, is to emphasize to Philip that he is under a grave moral obligation to obey the Pope’s commands, i.e., he is under a ‘necessity of precept’ to do so, under pain of losing salvation. For willful and obstinate resistance to the Roman Pontiff, as God’s chief representative, is in effect resistance to God Himself. And why is this particularly relevant to the present discussion? Because while a just precept, like a just law, can objectively oblige whole populations subject to the jurisdiction of the legislator, so that no member thereof can justly claim a right to be exempt from the demands of that precept, it engenders a real subjective moral obligation of obedience for any given person or group in that population only when it has been duly communicated to that person or group. That is: (a) when these subjects recognize (or have no reasonable excuse for not recognizing) the legitimate jurisdiction over themselves of the commanding authority; and (b) when they have been informed about the precept being imposed by said authority and understand its content – or at least, have been given a reasonable motivation and opportunity to learn and understand it. For of course, one can never be morally blameworthy for failing to obey a precept of divine or human positive law14 when one is invincibly ignorant of its legitimacy, existence, or content.
The relevance of this to our discussion should now be clear. For the Catholic but insubordinate Philip was certainly not ‘invincibly ignorant’ of the revealed truth regarding the Pope’s supreme jurisdiction in ecclesiastical matters. On the contrary, the Pope himself was personally hammering it home to him. Yet he was stubbornly resisting Boniface’s injunction to stop violating the rights of the Church in France. That is the kind of insubordination Boniface was targeting as endangering eternal perdition, not a lack of (explicit) subjection to the Roman Pontiff arising from invincible ignorance of the divine authority given by Christ to Peter’s successors. Reading between Pope Boniface’s ex cathedra lines, as it were, we can almost hear him add a fuller explanation of what he meant: “Submission to the Roman Pontiff is altogether necessary for salvation for every human creature, including [thumping his fist] Catholic kings and emperors! They’re not exempt!” Actually, it is entirely possible that a necessity of precept is the only kind of “necessity for salvation” that Boniface VIII had in mind in US. However, even if he also meant to teach that submission to the pope is “absolutely necessary” as a means of salvation, his tacit acknowledgment that an implicit submission could in some cases be sufficient to fulfill that necessity is enough to guarantee the substantial continuity of his infallible definition with the modern magisterial statements that might at first seem incompatible with it.
The corollary of what has just been said is that we should not read between Pope Boniface’s lines, as Feeney/SBC theology seems to do, the following thesis: “Conscious and explicit submission to the Roman Pontiff is altogether necessary for salvation for every human creature, including those adults who are invincibly ignorant of the Pontiff’s divinely bestowed authority! They’re not exempt!” Nothing, probably, was further from Boniface’s mind at that moment, in the thick of his politico-religious duel with the French monarch, than passing judgment on the spiritual state and destiny of people visibly outside the Church’s structures who might be invincibly ignorant of the Pope’s revealed role and privileges. We should always be very cautious about reading into magisterial pronouncements answers to questions which they did not intend to address.
Conclusion
I hope the reflections in this essay on Cantate Domino and Unam Sanctam may help some of Father Feeney’s followers to see how these infallible magisterial interventions can and should be interpreted in harmony with the 1949 Holy Office Letter, which in turn has now been ‘upgraded’ by being referenced in Lumen Gentium and the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Even if I have some success in this objective, however, I know from previous friendly discussions with SBC leaders that they will still be likely to insist that, even supposing the older and more recent magisterial documents can theoretically be harmonized, there remains a practical and pastoral urgency that extra Ecclesiam nulla salus be taught loud and clear. And I think they are right. For whatever else may be said, one is entitled to be much more confident of reaching Heaven when in possession of the fullness of revealed truth and the sacramental means of grace. And it also remains true that there is an absolute, objective and grave necessity of precept, deriving from Christ’s expressed will for all his followers to be united in the Church he founded, for all human beings to become Catholics. Accordingly, the SBC, in fidelity to Fr. Feeney’s example, will no doubt continue to insist on this precept at a time when indifferentism, and an excessive emphasis on dialogue at the expense of conversion, are endangering so many souls.
Rather than constantly taking the easy and guaranteed-non-offensive option of blandly assuring non-Catholics that the Church today recognizes their sincerity and good faith, and presumes (of course!) that they are on the road to salvation in whatever religion they happen to profess at present, I think we need rather more of the ‘up-front’ evangelistic approach which the SBC has inherited from Fr. Feeney. It’s an approach reminiscent of those old World War I recruiting posters from which an elderly gentleman in a starred-and-striped top hat eye-balls the viewer head-on, and points a huge finger straight out at him over the caption, “Uncle Sam wants YOU!” Perhaps we should be communicating rather more directly to our Protestant, lapsed Catholic and non-Christian brethren the unequivocal message that “Jesus Christ wants YOU to be a Roman Catholic!” If we did so rather more boldly, I suspect that the spiritual fruits would be very considerable, with a harvest of souls that would truly give glory to God.15 Whatever Leonard Feeney’s theological and prudential mistakes may have been, his enduring legacy will far outweigh them if it animates a new generation of Catholics to proclaim that message “from the housetops”.
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Endnotes
1 In spite of what most would consider persuasive evidence to the contrary, Feeney could never bring himself to believe that this document carried the personal endorsement of Pius XII. (This pope was himself the head of the Holy Office.)
2 Cf. Summa Theologiae (ST), IIa IIae, Q. 11, arts. 1 and 2.
3 ST, IIa IIae, Q. 11, art. 2, ad 3 (emphasis added).
4 ST, IIa IIae, Q. 39, art. 1, ad 2 (emphasis added).
5 I, X, VIII.
6 ST, IIa IIae, Q. 11, art. 2, ad 3 (emphasis added).
7 In the 1917 Code of Canon Law, c. 2316 states that “one who participates in religious activities with heretics (communicat in divinis cum haereticis), contrary to what is laid down in c. 1258, is suspect of heresy”. Canon 1258 in turn asserts, “The faithful are not permitted to attend or participate in the religious acts of non-Catholics (in sacris acatholicorum) in any active way whatsoever.” It is thus clear that the Code is applying the term “heretics” to non-Catholic Christians in general. By the early twentieth century, of course, it was commonly presumed that those born and raised in Protestant and other non-Catholic denominations were in many or most cases only material, not formal, heretics. And even in earlier centuries when such folks were more likely to be deemed true (i.e., formal and culpable) heretics, this was still – as is argued in the main text – a presumption about a matter of contingent fact, not a doctrinal judgment as such.
8 I have the impression that nearly all who follow Fr. Feeney’s understanding of ‘the salvation dogma’ – at least, nearly all the prominent and articulate advocates of that position – are ‘cradle Catholics’, as he was. The only well-known exception at present is the former Presbyterian minister Gerry Matatics. But since he is an avowed sedevacantist, our SBC brethren, far from recognizing Mr. Matatics as ‘one of their own’, would probably deem him extra Ecclesiam as a schismatic. My own understanding is that sedevacantists, in denying the papal status of the post-conciliar occupants of the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace, are certainly in material schism. For they openly and totally reject the authority of the man who is in fact Peter’s Successor. But if at the subjective level they are fully sincere in their denial, they would not appear to be true (i.e., formal) schismatics. For you are guilty of schism (and so put yourself extra Ecclesiam) only when you rebelliously withdraw your submission from the man you yourself know is Christ’s Vicar on earth. But in cases where said denial itself springs culpably from presumption and pride, and so is not fully sincere, such sedevacantists will be true schismatics. To many of us, it does indeed seem presumptuous and proud for a Catholic to categorize all the men recently elected to the See of Peter as true heretics, i.e., as obstinate dissenters from truths which they know the Church proposes as divinely revealed. But only God, of course, can judge their degree of guilt or innocence in that regard. On the other hand, if we are talking about the status of sedevacantist communities as such, rather than that of their individual members, it seems perfectly correct to speak of them without scruple or qualification as “schismatic”. For since a community, unlike an individual, has no conscience that might be subjectively inculpable, what matters here is the community’s objective and publicly professed relationship with the man whom the world in general recognizes as being the head of the Roman Catholic Church. (The more nuanced variety of sedevacantism that is now often known as ‘sedeprivationism’ would need separate analysis. But that would take us too far afield from the topic of the present essay.)
9 Some readers (at both the traditionalist and liberal ends of the theological spectrum) will be sure to object at this point that the Church of Vatican II no longer claims to be “the one and only real Church”. They will appeal above all, of course, to the endlessly discussed statement in Lumen Gentium #8 that the Church founded by Jesus Christ “subsists in” (rather than simply “is”) the Catholic Church under Peter’s successor. I mention this ‘anti-traditional’ interpretation of the said conciliar text mainly just to acknowledge its existence and to register my disagreement with it: for an adequate defense of a ‘hermeneutic of continuity’ in understanding this text would require another full paper. However, we may note briefly that the post-conciliar magisterium itself rejects this claim of doctrinal discontinuity. In the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s document, “Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine of the Church” (June 29, 2007), the answer to Q. 2 includes the following statement: “In number 8 of the Dogmatic Constitution Lumen gentium ‘subsistence’ means this perduring, historical continuity and the permanence of all the elements instituted by Christ in the Catholic Church, in which the Church of Christ is concretely found on this earth.” In other words, “subsists in” means essentially the same thing as “is” – but within the historical and diachronic, rather than abstract and synchronic, perspective that the context calls for. The Council can be accurately paraphrased as saying in LG #8 that the same Church as was founded two thousand years ago continues to exist now, with all the elements Christ gave to it, as the Catholic Church under Peter’s successor. (When Christ founded the Church, of course, it didn’t go by the name “Catholic”, which we don’t find in documents dating before the early second century; and Peter himself, rather than one of his successors, was its earthly leader.)
10 Dz 469 = DS 875.
11 Cf. Part A, section III, #6 and #7, also note 16.
12 Theologians distinguish between the concepts of necessity of precept and necessity of means. The first refers to a moral “necessity” (that is, duty or obligation). I am under a ‘necessity of precept’ to do something when a superior authority (divine or human) lawfully commands me to do it. The second concept refers simply to what one needs as a means of attaining a certain end, and so is per se morally neutral. For instance, we need a plane or ship by a ‘necessity of means’ in order to cross the Atlantic. In that case the necessity is absolute, because nobody can swim the Atlantic. However, there can be a necessity of means that is relative, not absolute. For instance, one normally needs to buy a ticket as a means of being admitted to a cinema to watch a movie. But this necessity is not absolute, for if the owner of the cinema is your friend he may let you in free. Catholic theology regards sacramental baptism as being necessary for salvation by a necessity of precept (it’s commanded by Christ) and also by a necessity of means. But the latter necessity is only relative; for when the sacrament is impossible before death, God will dispense from the need for it in the case of those who are otherwise adequately disposed for salvation.
13 Dz 469 = DS 874, emphasis added.
14 . . . as distinct from natural law, which of course does not include the obligation to be subordinate to the Roman Pontiff.
15 Once again, a corroborative personal testimony may be useful. During the months of 1971-1972 when I was struggling, with much prayer, reading and reflection, over the decision whether to enter the Church, more than one well-meaning Catholic acquaintance, imbued with the new and heady “spirit of Vatican II”, blandly advised me just to “follow my conscience”. One even advised me to become an Anglican, since that, he suggested, would be for me a “congenial” mid-way position between Catholicism and the Calvinism of my upbringing. I was living in Papua New Guinea at the time and had occasion to share these reflections and suggested options with the late Archbishop Virgil Copas of Port Moresby. This fine missionary prelate, himself a Father of Vatican II, did not share that alleged “spirit” of the Council. He told me, kindly but bluntly, “Brian, I am sure Our Lord would want you to join the Church he himself founded.” These uncompromising words from a Successor of the Apostles remained fixed in my mind and definitely helped me to make the decision to become a Catholic.