Vol 10 Issue 2 ~ Editor: Rev. Fr. Courtney Edward Krier
January 14, 2017 ~ Saint Hilary, opn!
1. Baptism: Means of Salvation (101)
2. Second Sunday after Epiphany
3. Saint Paul, Hermit
4. Family and Marriage
5. Articles and notices
Dear Reader:
Epiphany, which is Greek for manifestation, is shown first in that Christ manifested Himself to the Gentile world in the persons of the three Wisemen, Balthazar, Melchior and Gaspar. This is unique in that He did not manifest Himself to the Jews until His Baptism, the second Manifestation when the Father spoke and the Holy Ghost descended over Him. He was made manifest, finally, to His disciples when He performed His first miracle. This third manifestation the Church commemorates in the Second Sunday after Epiphany. As the Holy Family is commemorated in the First Sunday after Epiphany, the tendency is to take the Second Sunday as reflecting more upon marriage than on the Epiphany to the disciples. Though this Epiphany cannot be forgotten, the pastoral aspect, particularly today, is provided a background to address the issue of marriage and to recognize, since the tradition of the Church is that, just as in His Baptism, there was the institution of Baptism, so, too, with Christ’s presence at the marriage of Cana, there was the institution of the Sacrament of Matrimony.
In the Newsletter there is always an attempt to provide some reflection on Marriage and the Family. Marriage, instituted by God from the beginning of man, is the foundation of society. As such, the Church does everything to ensure that it is well preserved and protected, knowing that society will fall without the strong foundation of the family that is constituted by marriage. But this same knowledge is why the enemy of mankind does everything possible to destroy this institution. Throughout history the first sign of the collapse of a society is the crumbling of its family structure. Where societies have been strong has been in that of the preservation of the family, where the father exemplified virtue and the mother nurtured the children in virtue. Though these virtues were natural, they kept these societies from plummeting into the unnatural vices that saw other societies quickly deteriorate. It is evident even in our society where, with the promotion of unnatural vice, first with birth control and divorce, abortion quickly followed and now sodomy is becoming rampant. At the same time, the natural virtues within American society are also quickly disappearing as discord, vice, addiction, rebellion, and murders become the norm and no longer the exception. This correlation should be evident; but if denied will be the self-destruction of our society.
As always, enjoy the readings and commentaries provided for your benefit. —The Editor
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Baptism
Means of Salvation
Sacrament of Baptism
Baptism by Desire and Baptism in Blood
Finally, Pope Pius XII issued the three Church documents which touched on the topic of the Church as the only means of salvation. In the first, the Encyclical, Mystici Corporis, June 29, 1943, Pius XII teaches:
Actually only those are to be included as members of the Church who have been baptized and profess the true faith, and who have not been so unfortunate as to separate themselves from the unity of the Body, or been excluded by legitimate authority for grave faults committed. “For in one spirit” says the Apostle, “were we all baptized into one Body, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether bond or free.”[ I Cor., XII, 13.] As therefore in the true Christian community there is only one Body, one Spirit, one Lord, and one Baptism, so there can be only one faith. [Cf. Eph., IV, 5.] And therefore, if a man refuse to hear the Church, let him be considered—so the Lord commands—as a heathen and a publican. [Cf. Matth., XVIII, 17.] It follows that those who are divided in faith or government cannot be living in the unity of such a Body, nor can they be living the life of its one Divine Spirit. (Par. 22.)
Pope Pius XI had already issued the encyclical, Mortalium animos, where he exposed the error of those who changed the visibility of the Church to a “federation” or union of churches:
A good number of them, for example, deny that the Church of Christ must be visible and apparent, at least to such a degree that it appears as one body of faithful, agreeing in one and the same doctrine under one teaching authority and government; but, on the contrary, they understand a visible Church as nothing else than a Federation, composed of various communities of Christians, even though they adhere to different doctrines, which may even be incompatible one with another. (Par. 6)
Now, having taught once again as a Catholic teaching that only those are members of the Mystical Body of Christ who are baptized, hold the same faith and remain united with legitimate authority, Pius XII rejects also the notion of a visible and invisible Church (which, too, has always been specifically rejected since the time of the Protestant Innovators of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries), even that of reformulating it in the expression of the Body of Christ and the Soul of Christ, i.e., that non-Catholics can be the soul of the Mystical Body of Christ, even though they are not members of the Church (nor even if they are not within the Church). Pius XII reiterates what Pope Leo XIII taught in Divinum Illud Munus: Let it suffice to state that, as Christ is the Head of the Church, so is the Holy Ghost her soul. “What the soul is in our body, that is the Holy Ghost in Christ’s body, the Church” (St. Aug., Serm. 187, de Temp.).
If we examine closely this divine principle of life and power given by Christ, insofar as it constitutes the very source of every gift and created grace, we easily perceive that it is nothing else than the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, and who is called in a special way, the “Spirit of Christ” or the “Spirit of the Son.” [Rom, VIII, 9; II Cor. III, 17; Gal. IV, 6.] For it was by this Breath of grace and truth that the Son of God anointed His soul in the immaculate womb of the Blessed Virgin; this Spirit delights to dwell in the beloved soul of our Redeemer as in His most cherished shrine; this Spirit Christ merited for us on the Cross by shedding His Own Blood; this Spirit He bestowed on the Church for the remission of sins, when He breathed on the Apostles; [Cf. John, XX, 22] and while Christ alone received this Spirit without measure,[ Cf. John, III, 34.] to the members of the Mystical Body He is imparted only according to the measure of the giving of Christ from Christ’s own fulness. [Cf. Eph., I, 8; IV, 7.] But after Christ’s glorification on the Cross, His Spirit is communicated to the Church in an abundant outpouring, so that she, and her individual members, may become daily more and more like to our Savior. It is the Spirit of Christ that has made us adopted sons of God [Cf. Rom, VIII, 14-17; Gal., IV, 6-7.] in order that one day “we all beholding the glory of the Lord with open face may be transformed into the same image from glory to glory.”[ Cf. II Cor., III, 18.]
To this Spirit of Christ, also, as to an invisible principle is to be ascribed the fact that all the parts of the Body are joined one with the other and with their exalted Head; for He is entire in the Head, entire in the Body, and entire in each of the members. To the members He is present and assists them in proportion to their various duties and offices, and the greater or less degree of spiritual health which they enjoy. It is He who, through His heavenly grace, is the principle of every supernatural act in all parts of the Body. It is He who, while He is personally present and divinely active in all the members, nevertheless in the inferior members acts also through the ministry of the higher members. Finally, while by His grace He provides for the continual growth of the Church, He yet refuses to dwell through sanctifying grace in those members that are wholly severed from the Body. This presence and activity of the Spirit of Jesus Christ is tersely and vigorously described by Our predecessor of immortal memory Leo XIII in his Encyclical Letter Divinum Illud in these words: “Let it suffice to say that, as Christ is the Head of the Church, so is the Holy Spirit her soul.” [A.S.S., XXIX, p. 650.] (Cf. DB 2286, 2288).
To the dismay of Pope Pius XII, many theologians who had fallen into neo-Modernism adopted the excuse that they did not have to accept the Catholic teachings he set forth in Mystici Corporis and continued to teach that those outside the Church were the “soul of the Church”, or members of the “invisible” Church. Joseph Fenton places the introduction, which developed into the concepts of the Church being divided into “Body and Soul”, back to Saint Robert Bellarmine in his use of the term Body and Soul.
Thus, by the end of the eighteenth century the misuse of St. Robert’s term “body” and “soul” of the Church had reached its final result. The De ecclesia militante had been written in the first place to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that the one and only supernatural kingdom of God of the New Testament is an organized society, the religious community over which the Roman Pontiff presides as the Vicar of Christ on earth. St. Robert had shown conclusively that there is not and there can be no such thing as an “invisible Church” in the dispensation of the New Testament. He had concentrated on the proof that there is only one ecclesia, and that consequently there is no possibility of postulating an “invisible Church” in any way distinct from the one visible Mystical Body of Jesus Christ in this world.
Now, hardly more than a century and a half after St. Robert’s death, the very contradictories to his basic teaching were being set forth by Catholic writers using his own terminology. The name “soul of the Church,” which St. Robert had applied to what his contemporaries called the inward or invisible bond of ecclesiastical unity, was gradually deflected from the purpose it had served in the De ecclesia militante until it finally became a vehicle for the expression of the very teaching St. Robert had set out to disprove. For D’Argentre, the “soul of the Church” in the Bellarminian sense was no longer one of the two bonds of union within the Church but became a factor “acting as a principle of spiritual life for the faithful.” For Tournely and Kilber this same “soul of the Church” was made to function as a principle in the definition of an “invisible Church” made up of men and women in the state of grace. For Legrand and the men who followed him, this same “soul of the Church” became itself an “invisible Church.” And the reality to which St. Robert had applied his classical definition became, not the one true ecclesia of the New Testament, as it was in the De ecclesia militante and as it is in Catholic doctrine, but only “the body of the Church.” (Fenton, p. 186-87)
Some chose to interpret the necessity to belong to the Church merely as a precept. In addition, the neo-Modernists pointed to a seeming contradiction in the statement Outside the Catholic Church there is no salvation as implying there is an invisible church and a visible church since the Catholic Church obviously included those who received baptism in desire (in voto) yet did not include them as members of the visible church. Therefore, Pius XII in issuing the Encyclical Humani generis (August 12, 1950) addressed both that what was taught in Mystici Corporis must be accepted as Church doctrine and that the idea of a visible and invisible church is contrary to Church teaching. If one speaks of the Soul of the Church, then one can only be speaking of the Holy Ghost, not non-Catholics.
Some say they are not bound by the doctrine, explained in Our Encyclical Letter of a few years ago, and based on the Sources of Revelation, which teaches that the Mystical Body of Christ and the Roman Catholic Church are one and the same thing. [Cfr. Litt. Enc. Mystici Corporis Christi, A.A.S., vol. XXXV, p. 193 sq.] Some reduce to a meaningless formula the necessity of belonging to the true Church in order to gain eternal salvation. Others finally belittle the reasonable character of the credibility of Christian faith. (Par. 27)
. . . [F]inally, let them not think, indulging in a false “irenism,” that the dissident and the erring can happily be brought back to the bosom of the Church, if the whole truth found in the Church is not sincerely taught to all without corruption or diminution. (Par. 43)
In Mystici Corporis Pius XII also wrote:
As you know very well, Venerable Brethren, from the beginning of Our Pontificate, We have entrusted even those who do not belong to the visible structure (compagem) of the Catholic Church to the heavenly protection and direction, solemnly asserting that, following the example of the Good Shepherd, We wanted nothing more than that they should have life and have it more abundantly. Begging the prayers of the entire Church, We wish to repeat Our solemn declaration in this encyclical letter in which We have praised the great and glorious Body of Christ, most affectionately inviting each and every one of them [those who are not members of the Church] to co-operate generously and willingly with the inward impulses of divine grace and to take care to extricate themselves from that condition in which they cannot be secure about their own eternal salvation. For even though they may be directed towards the Redeemer’s Mystical Body by a sort of unconscious desire and intention (etiamsi inscio quodam desiderio ac voto ad mysticum Redemptoris Corpus ordinentur), they still lack so many and such great heavenly helps and aids that can be enjoyed only in the Catholic Church.(Par. 103; transl. Joseph Fenton)
Joseph Fenton, in his book The Catholic Church and Salvation explains this paragraph as follows:
The people whom the Holy Father describes as not being “secure” about the affair of their own eternal salvation are non-members of the Church who have no clear or explicit intention of entering this society. This is evident from the context itself. He is speaking of “those who do not belong to the visible structure of the Catholic Church (qui ad adspectabilem non pertinent Catholicae Ecclesiae compagem),” and of people who may be ordered or directed to the Church by a kind of unconscious intention and desire. Thus the conditions he sets down are such as to exclude both members of the Church and non-Catholics who are clearly aware of the Church and explicitly desirous of joining it.
At this point, incidentally, it is well to point out the misleading and somewhat inaccurate character of the expression “visible body of the Catholic Church,” employed in this place by many published translations of the encyclical. The Latin term here rendered as “body” is the word “compages.” Actually this has the sense of a joining together, a structure, or a composition. Furthermore, in view of the eccentric terminology which has sometimes been employed in popular religious works treating of the Church as Our Lord’s Mystical Body and dealing with the dogma of the Church’s necessity for the attainment of eternal salvation, it was somewhat unfortunate that people should be led to believe that the encyclical itself spoke of a visible body of the Catholic Church. There was always the danger that people might be misled, through the influence of unscientific treatises written before the publication of the Mystici Corporis Christi, to imagine that such a terminology permitted them to hold that there could be such a thing as an invisible body of the true Church of Jesus Christ.
The Holy Father, in the encyclical, brings out the fact that, from the very beginning of his pontificate, he has been praying to God for the eternal salvation of non-Catholics, as well as for the salvation of the members of the true Church. He has begged God to take care of all of them, and to grant that they might have life and have it more abundantly. In acting thus, the Sovereign Pontiff was acting according to the commission he had received from God. He is the Vicar of Christ on earth. Our Lord, whose Vicar he is, had said, in defining the basic aim of His own mission: “I am come that they may have life, and may have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10)
Now, the text of the Mystici Corporis Christi makes it quite clear that the Holy Father knows and teaches that this supernatural life of sanctifying grace can be possessed only by those who are in some way “within” or in vital contact with the Catholic Church. The non-members of the Church who have no explicit intention of joining or entering it can have the life of grace, but only if they are ordered or disposed toward the Church by a certain unconscious intention or desire. By the clearest sort of inference, then, the teaching of the Roman Pontiff thus implies that non-members of the Catholic Church who have not even an implicit desire or intention to enter the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ are not in a position in which they can possess the supernatural life of sanctifying grace. This, of course, is the very teaching brought out so effectively by Pope Boniface VIII in the Unam sanctam, when he declared that there is neither salvation nor the remission of sins outside the Catholic Church.
In the Mystici Corporis Christi Pope Pius XII asserts true Catholic doctrine by teaching that a non-member of the Church who is within the Church only in the sense that he has an unconscious or implicit desire of entering it as a member can possess the supernatural life of sanctifying grace. At the same time, however, he brings out a lesson much needed by some of the writers of our generation when he points out the fact that people who are within the Church only by an unconscious desire cannot be secure about the affair of their eternal salvation precisely because they “still lack so many and such great heavenly helps and aids that can be enjoyed only in the Catholic Church.”
Here the expression “in the Catholic Church” obviously means “in the membership of the Catholic Church.” Manifestly the Holy Father is referring to the incomparable spiritual advantages which a man may enjoy (“licet frui,” in the words of the Latin text of the encyclical) as a member of the Catholic Church which are not and cannot be available to him if he is “within” the Church only in the sense that he has an implicit desire to enter it and to remain in it. These advantages are such as to give the man who possesses them a kind of relative security about the affair of his eternal salvation. Any person who does not enjoy membership in the true Church cannot possibly possess such security.
The encyclical speaks of non-members of the Church who have a true and sincere, though merely implicit, desire of entering it as being in a situation “in which they cannot be secure about their eternal salvation (in quo de sempiterna cuiusque salute securi esse non possunt).” Many of the published translations of the Mystici Corporis Christi employ the expression “in which they cannot be sure of their salvation” in rendering this clause into English. This terminology is both inexact and seriously misleading. In our language “sure” is one of the synonyms of the word “certain.” The Holy Father quite definitely did not mean to imply, in denying that people who are within the Church only by way of an explicit desire or intention are “securi” about their own salvation, that members of the true Church may be certain that they are predestined by God to the glory of heaven.
As a matter of fact, the Council of Trent, in its famous Decree on Justification, has warned us solemnly on this subject.
“And no one, as long as he is living in this mortal condition, ought to be so presumptuous on the subject of the hidden mystery of divine predestination as to decide with certainty that he is wholly in the number of the predestined, as if it were true that the man who has been justified were to be either unable to sin again or, if he should sin again, ought to promise himself a repentance that is certain. For, except by way of a special revelation, it cannot be known whom God has chosen unto Himself.” (DB 805)
Sureness or certainty of eternal salvation is one thing. The Church, through the Council of Trent, has told us that this certainty is unavailable other than by way of a special revelation from God Himself. But security in the line of eternal salvation is something else again. This is a favor which men may have as members of the Catholic Church, and only in this way. Such is the teaching of Pope Pius XII in the encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi. (Fenton, 85-88)
(To be continued)
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Fr. Leonard Goffine
The Ecclesiastical Year (1880)
In the Introit of this day’s Mass the Church calls upon all creatures to thank God for the Incarnation of His only-begotten Son. Let all the earth adore Thee, O God and sing to Thee: let it sing a psalm to Thy name (Ps. 65:4). Shout with joy to God all the earth, sing ye a psalm to His name: give glory to His praise (Ps. 65:1-2). Glory be to the Father, &c.
Prayer of the Church. Almighty and eternal God, Who disposest all things in heaven and on earth: mercifully hear the supplications of Thy people, and give Thy peace to our times. Through our Lord, etc.
EPISTLE (Rom.12:6-16). Brethren: We have different gifts, according to the grace that is given us: either prophecy, to be used according to the rule of faith, or ministry in ministering, or he that teacheth in doctrine, he that exhorteth in exhorting, he that giveth with simplicity, he that ruleth with carefulness, he that sheweth mercy with cheerfulness. Let love be without dissimulation. Hating that which is evil, cleaving to that which is good: loving one another with the charity of brotherhood: with honor preventing one another: in carefulness not slothful: in spirit fervent: serving the Lord: rejoicing in hope: patient in tribulation: instant in prayer: communicating to the necessities of the saints: pursuing hospitality: bless them that persecute you: bless and curse not. Rejoice with them that rejoice, weep with them that weep: being of one mind, one towards another: not minding high things, but consenting to the humble. Be not wise in your own conceits.
EXPLANATION.
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