Note on the Recent Vatican Statement About the Church
and Ecumenism
By Fr. Bernhard Blankenhorn, OP
July 22, 2007
A good number of
parishioners have requested clarification regarding a document released by the
Vatican on June 29 and much discussed since in the media. The document
discusses aspects of the relationship between the Catholic Church, the eastern
Orthodox Churches and the Protestant Christian communities. I will refer
to this text as “the CDF document,” since it was issued by the Congregation for
the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), with the approval of Pope Benedict XVI.
First, the CDF document
was primarily written for Catholic theologians. It uses technical
theological language which may not always be accessible to the general
public. Second, the CDF document does not intend to offer any sort of
comprehensive treatment about the relationship between the Catholic Church and
other Christian communities. Rather, it focuses on a very particular
issue regarding the use of the term “Church” in theological discourse.
Some preliminary remarks are therefore in order.
The Catholic Church has
affirmed and continues to hold that Protestants are members of the Christ’s
Church by faith and baptism. Nothing
in the recent document denies this conviction. This is why we call
Protestants “separated brethren,” that is, brothers and sisters in Christ.
Furthermore, the CDF
document makes no pronouncement on the holiness of our Protestant
brethren. It does not claim that Protestant individuals are spiritually
inferior to Catholic believers. In fact, it says nothing on the
perfection or imperfection of Protestant believers, or, for that matter,
Catholic believers. Its entire focus concerns the spiritual gifts
imparted to Christian communities, not Christian individuals.
The CDF document consistently
uses the term “Church” in a very precise, technical sense. In classical
Catholic theology, a “Church” in the full sense of the term is not just a
community of Christian disciples. Rather, it refers to a community that,
according to Catholic belief, contains all of the “elements of sanctification
and truth” imparted by Christ and transmitted through his apostles. The
CDF document focuses on this phrase.
The term “elements of
sanctification” primarily refers to the sacraments. The Catholic Church
believes that Christ instituted seven sacraments: baptism, confirmation, the
Eucharist, reconciliation, holy matrimony, holy orders (bishops, priest,
deacons) and the anointing of the sick. Each sacrament involves a unique
encounter with Christ and his healing power beyond the simple personal
encounter with him in faith and prayer. A non-Catholic can certainly meet
Christ in a powerful way without some of these sacraments. These holy
rites do not guarantee greater personal holiness for the recipient. Rather,
they are more effective means or opportunities to grow in holiness, but depend
on the proper disposition of the recipient. Virtually all Protestant
communities celebrate the sacrament of baptism. The CDF document does not
deny the full validity and spiritual value of this rite, but points out that
the absence of the other sacraments is a lost opportunity for our Protestant
brethren, without judging their state of sanctity.
Many Protestant
communities also celebrate a rite of the Lord’s Supper or communion, and may
thus seem to have another sacrament corresponding to the Catholic
Eucharist. Vatican II’s Decree on Ecumenism
affirmed that the liturgical actions of our separated brethren can certainly be
the means to a deeper share in the life of grace.
Vatican II also declared that the Protestant communities “have not preserved
the proper reality of the Eucharistic mystery in its fullness.”
This is because the Catholic Church has always believed the complete sacrament
of the Eucharist to consist of the very flesh and blood of Jesus transformed
through the liturgical action of a properly ordained priest. Vatican II
explained that because the Protestant communities have not preserved the
sacrament of holy orders, the full sacrament of the Eucharist is not present in
their midst. For this
reason, the Church in the technical sense of the term is absent as well.
This claim by Vatican II and the CDF document is hardly new. Already
around 110 A.D., St. Ignatius of Antioch wrote, “Let everyone respect the
deacons as they would respect Jesus Christ, and just as they respect the bishop
as a type of the Father, and the presbyters as the council of God and college
of the apostles. Without these, it [the gathering of the faithful] cannot
be called a Church.” The 16th
century Protestant reformers either explicitly rejected holy orders as a
sacrament (e.g. Martin Luther) or deliberately changed the rite of ordination,
introducing a break with the ancient tradition (e.g. Anglicanism).
The term “elements of
truth” primarily refers to the public revelation transmitted through the Old
Testament and the apostles. The Catholic Church holds that this
revelation comes to us in two ways: the Bible and Tradition. With our
Protestant brethren, we venerate the Bible as the Word of God. Tradition
refers to the oral teaching of the apostles passed down through the generations,
the unchanging core of ancient doctrines that may not be explicit in the
Bible. Two examples are prayer to the saints and worship of the
Eucharist. The content of Tradition manifests itself throughout history,
especially in the unchanging elements of the liturgy and the teachings of the
bishops meeting in Council (e.g. the Council of Nicea
in 325, Vatican II in 1962-5). Since
the Protestant communities do not accept Tradition as a reliable transmission
of apostolic teaching, the Catholic Church sees this absence of Tradition as a
real loss to the Protestant communities as they seek to understand fully the
Gospel of Jesus Christ.
In denying the term
“Church” to the Protestant communities, the CDF document is essentially
pointing to the absence of certain sacraments and the absence of Tradition in
their beliefs. Because the Catholic Church holds to the authenticity of
all seven sacraments and of Tradition, she cannot consider the absence of any
of the sacraments nor of Tradition as superfluous or insignificant. In
other words, if the Catholic Church were to recognize Protestant communities as
churches in the classical, technical sense of the term, then she would be
declaring that most of her own sacraments and Tradition are superfluous to the
life of Catholics. The Catholic Church would be declaring that the
Eucharistic presence of Christ’s flesh and blood is basically unimportant for
the life of Catholics, and this she cannot do. The CDF document repeats
the teaching of Vatican II that the Catholic Church alone possesses all the
means of salvation, meaning, she possesses all of the seven sacraments,
Tradition and the gift of unity around the successor of Peter, the pope.
Both the CDF document and Vatican II affirm that the Protestant communities can
be real means to salvation, since they already possess many elements of truth
and sanctification, such as the gifts of faith, baptism and the Bible.
In modern everyday
usage among Christians, the term “church” tends to refer to any community of
believing Christians, whether Protestant, eastern Orthodox or Catholic.
When the CDF document denies that Protestant communities can be called
“Churches,” it does not deny that the many communities of Protestant believers
are true Christian communities. The CDF document is not using the term
“Church” to refer to a gathering of true believers. It is only using the
term to refer to the presence of all of the sacraments, Scripture and
Tradition.
Every key assertion in
the recent CDF document is essentially a repetition or summary of the teachings
of Vatican II. There is nothing new in this document. It highlights
lesser-known teachings of Vatican II whose theological language may at times be
foreign to us. The document’s release therefore does not signal an
essential reversal in the Catholic Church’s commitment to ecumenical dialogue
and Christian unity.
(c) Bernhard Blankenhorn,
2007