The One True Church

[rest_in_thee]

First Things, the journal for which the great, late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus was editor, has published an article he wrote for the magazine just before he died. I have just read it, and it is a wonderful commentary on ecumenism and the nature of the Church, and a Catholic understanding of the One True Church. Here is an excerpt:

My church is

Comments

[elizabby]

In sum, Catholics should not fear offending our ecumenical partners by affirming what we believe the Catholic Church to be. To be sure, that affirmation has weighty implications. For instance, Lumen Gentium also says, “Whosoever, therefore, knowing that the Catholic Church was made necessary by Christ, would refuse to enter or to remain in it, could not be saved.” But that, too, should not offend non-Catholic Christians, since we can all agree that such a person would be acting against his conscience and his sure discernment of the will of God. If he continues on that course without repentance, he could not be saved. It is quite a different matter with those who do not know-i.e., do not recognize the truth-that the Catholic Church is what she claims to be. They are wrong about that, of course, but that, presumably, is one reason why they are not Catholics. I'm not sure I've got this completely down, but as a non-Catholic Christian I don't really care one way or the other what claims you make for your own church. If someone wishes to

[rest_in_thee]

Well, you've got it a bit off. The Catholic Church does not claim to be the one and ONLY church, as you say. Rather, our theology asserts that Christ founded only one Church, which is the only logical assertion one can make, for the Church is the Body of Christ, and He is the Head, and for one Head there can only be one Body. And so in the one Church that Christ founded, Catholics believe that that Church most perfectly subsists in the Catholic Church. Or in the language of the article, the Catholic Church is "the Church of Jesus Christ most fully and rightly ordered through time

[elizabby]

Well, I did read it rather quickly, but I thought it read that the Catholic church is the only True Church, and everyone else is an "ecclesial community". Now, I'm not 100% sure what he means by that, but it does seem to say that everyone else is "not the One True Church". I also understood him to say that grace is imperfectly expressed through the other ecclesial communities which are not part of the "Church". Am I getting him wrong on this

[rest_in_thee]

but it does seem to say that everyone else is "not the One True Church"Sort of yes and sort of no. He's saying that there can be only one Church, because there is only one Christ, and Christ is the Head, and Church is the Body. There can't be many multiple churches. It can't be that everyone is a different Church, because that would necessitate many Christs. So what he is saying is that there is only One Church, established by Christ, and every baptized Christian is a part of that Church. The Catholic Church is where the Church established by Christ subsist most fully and most perfectly, or in the language of Fr. Neuhaus, the Catholic Church is the Church of Christ most fully and rightly ordered through time. In other words, there is no "my church is right and your church is wrong," but rather, "there is only Church, for Christ did not establish but one Church, and there can only ever be one Church." And Catholic believe (and honestly, it would be silly if we didn't) that the Catholic Church is most ordered towards the Church

[paedraggaidin]

I loved this.

I especially found myself nodding at this paragraph:

Tribalism has no place in this discussion. As John Paul II reminded Catholics in his 1990 encyclical Redemptoris Missio, being a Catholic is not reason for proprietorial pride but for profound gratitude for a grace received, all undeserved on our part. Moreover, a Catholic who does not earnestly want to recognize and rejoice in the gifts of grace to be found in other Christian communities will almost certainly be more hindrance than help in this discussion.

This is so true. What he calls tribalism leads to "sheep-stealing," something I've always deplored. A cousin of mine (from a non-denominational church) went down to Brazil on a "mission trip" to "convert people to the Lord." He was going to a country that was already Christian, but his church obviously didn't feel that way. Other local churches do similar things in Mexico, Central America, and the Philippines, and I think it's all terrible. I would think the same of Catholics who went to Protestant countries in

[underlankers]

Feh....Protestants have only graduated in the more tolerant Protestant countries from the era when Jack Chick was mainstream in the last 30 or so years, so what do you expect?

After all, in terms of intra-religious struggles, the nastiest and cruelest ones were between the various wings of the One Holy and Apostolic Church. That legacy hasn't entirely dissipated. Catholics (at least some of them) remember what Elizabeth II and the early Protestant monarchs were doing in England, and Cromwell, too. Protestants (or some of them, at least) fully remember Madgeberg and the Pope that celebrate a mass after St. Bartholomew's. The hate was mutual, but I can't with good conscience interpret the reaction of Gregory XIII as anything smacking of a Vicar of Christ.

[paedraggaidin]

I think the same of the infamously corrupt and debauched Renaissance popes. Ugh.

In short, I'm glad I was born in 1979, and not 1579.

[underlankers]

And I'm glad to be born in 1989, and not 889. After all, I'dve been either a retard or put to death for being a changeling. So....no complaints on modern life. I'll take the ills of my time over returning to the ills of previous times any day of the week and (heh) twice on Sunday.

[arago_sama]

I really like the phrase "the Church of Jesus Christ most fully and rightly ordered through time." I'd like to see it more used!

Regardless, may Christ unite His bride.

[rest_in_thee]

Yah, I think that language is more clear than the typical Catholic theological language of subsistence - not that subsistence is imprecise, but I don't think as many people are going to understand what is meant than will with the language Fr. Neuhaus used.

[crosstherubicon]

I find ti sad that when I stated precisely this you chose to pick out what elements of Church teaching you found divisive.

And "Substit in" is not the final word. It never can be either - it simply has to rest alongside "Est" until the end of the age. And as I said before - having a precise and honest ecclesiology is not a mark of lack of vision, nor of a lack of compassion, nor of a disdain for ecumenism. The problem is so often not from the side of the less ecclesiologically 'liberal' (whatever it means to be liberal in terms of a theology of the Church...) but from the side of those elements in the Church who simply wish to paint everyone who disagrees with them as hateful.

Until they are reminded that Francis himself had no time for a 'liberal' ecclesiology yet managed to almost die from love of neighbour.

[rest_in_thee]

My issues with your posts and comments tend not to be with what you say but with how you say them. You would do well to learn much from Fr. Neuhaus and from his late friend, Cardinal Dulles. I certainly appreciate your passion and your commitment to truth, but your method, in my opinion, leaves much to be desired.

[crosstherubicon]

I think a good part of it is simply that when I first started out here (years ago) there was a considerable degree of anti-Catholic rhetoric which probably affected my approach. As I stated before - what I might say here is rarely how I respond in the real world, where I use humour and a good pair of ears rather than cut-throat apologetics

[rest_in_thee]

Okay. If you think your methods are fine, there's not much I can say to convince you. Perhaps you'll convince a few people, but I believe you alienate far more people than you convince, and unnecessarily. You don't seem to have much of a sense for when it's the right time to proceed with a little bit of sensitivity to the topic at hand. You come across as thinking that just because you're right it doesn't matter how you say it, because you're right, dammit. Unfortunately what you say is not the only thing that matters, and the truth alone isn't enough to convince people or to reach their hearts. We're emotional beings, and you don't ever seem to account for that, not online. As for your real life encounters, it matters little to me since I don't know you in real life. I can only evaluate your exchanges here.

[underlankers]

Frankly, without modernism none of us would even be discussing this. We'd all be too busy killing each other over whose theology is the more proper one. Or were the events surrounding Oliver Cromwell, Verden, the Albigensian Crusade, St. Bartholomew's, the persecution of the Anabaptists by the Calvinists and Lutherans, and the horrors of the Thirty Years' War not committed by Christians who all believed their respective denominations were true and the only proper church?

I accept Catholic belief in that they are the only true Church. I cannot in good conscience give a loving response to how the Catholics treated Protestants in Germany and France, or how the Protestants treated Catholics in England or the United States (Anti-Catholicism was our Anti-semitism substitute). I can only express appreciation for modernism in that I can co-exist with multiple denominations without killing them over these issues (or being driven out for being heretics, like in Massachusetts and Virginia).

[paedraggaidin]

Hear, hear!

The Enlightenment certainly gets slammed a lot in many Christian quarters (among both Catholics and Protestants of various fundie stripe), and sure it has had its bad points (anticlericalism, etc.) but I believe, on balance, that it's influence has been more positive than negative. Pope John Paul II devoted a whole chapter to the "The Positive Fruits of the Enlightenment" in Memory and Identity.

With regard to the Catholic Church in particular, I think it took a pontiff who had personally experienced evil and oppressive regimes (the Nazis and then the Soviet-puppet Polish communist state) to finally be able to fully articulate the good that came of the Enlightenment (and, by extension, modernism, although I don't strictly mean the theological kind) and, moreover, to tie it in with the post-Vatican II reforms in ecumenical relations.

I'm not saying that previous popes didn't get it-I think some did, especially Leo XIII with Rerum Novarum-but John Paul was just wonderful at communicating it, and tying it in with a more

[underlankers]

It doesn't boggle mine. The Grass-Is-Always-Greener phenomenon is what I call it. We have problems in liberal democracy, so they must be of liberal democracy, and so if we go to dictatorship it'll be solved. In reality, it won't be, and a lot of people will die, and instead of speaking about the problems the problems themselves worm into the system and eventually bring it down. If they succeed, it may be a Christian version of the early Soviet Union, bright-eye-and-bushy-tailed revolutionaries out to create a Brave New World....and then some pragmatist manipulates the system, competely alters it to favor him, and slaughters every one of his rivals.

I favor the Enlightenment-era Church very much so. I'm willing to take liberal democratic decadence and co-existence instead of the older ways. While the Catholic Church built civilization and we are its heirs as Protestants, we also had descendants of those Catholics create a brand new experiment. I'd rather it continue than become just a thing for scholars to study.

[paedraggaidin]

I agree!

With regards to boggling...maybe I'm just a closet optimist. :P