Posted on 07/22/2007 7:40:38 PM PDT by xzins
Wednesday, 11 July 2007
Yesterday's Reuters headline: "The Vatican on Tuesday said Christian denominations outside the Roman Catholic Church were not full churches of Jesus Christ." The actual proclamation, posted on the official Vatican Web site, says that Protestant Churches are really "ecclesial communities" rather than Churches, because they lack apostolic succession, and therefore they "have not preserved the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic Mystery." Furthermore, not even the Eastern Orthodox Churches are real Churches, even though they were explicitly referred to as such in the Vatican document Unitatis Redintegratio (Decree on Ecumenism). The new document explains that they were only called Churches because "the Council wanted to adopt the traditional use of the term." This new clarification, issued officially by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, but in fact strongly supported by Pope Benedict XVI, manages to insult both Protestants and the Orthodox, and it may set ecumenism back a hundred years.
The new document, officially entitled "Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church," claims that the positions it takes do not reverse the intent of various Vatican II documents, especially Unitatis Redintegratio, but merely clarify them. In support of this contention, it cites other documents, all issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith: Mysterium Ecclesiae (1973), Communionis notio (1992), and Dominus Iesus (2000). The last two of these documents were issued while the current pope, as Cardinal Ratzinger, was prefect of the Congregation. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was born in 1542 with the name Sacred Congregation of the Universal Inquisition, and for centuries it has operated as an extremely conservative force with the Roman Catholic Church, opposing innovation and modernizing tendencies, suppressing dissent, and sometimes, in its first few centuries, persecuting those who believed differently. More recently, the congregation has engaged in the suppression of some of Catholicism's most innovative and committed thinkers, such as Yves Congar, Hans Küng, Charles Curran, Matthew Fox, and Jon Sobrino and other liberation theologians. In light of the history of the Congregation of the Faith, such conservative statements as those released this week are hardly surprising, though they are quite unwelcome.
It is natural for members of various Christian Churches to believe that the institutions to which they belong are the best representatives of Christ's body on earth--otherwise, why wouldn't they join a different Church? It is disingenuous, however, for the leader of a Church that has committed itself "irrevocably" (to use Pope John Paul II's word in Ut Unum Sint [That They May Be One] 3, emphasis original) to ecumenism to claim to be interested in unity while at the same time declaring that all other Christians belong to Churches that are in some way deficient. How different was the attitude of Benedict's predecessors, who wrote, "In subsequent centuries much more serious dissensions appeared and large communities became separated from full communion with the [Roman] Catholic Church--for which, often enough, men of both sides were to blame" (Unitatis Redintegratio 3). In Benedict's view, at various times in history groups of Christians wandered from the original, pure Roman Catholic Church, and any notion of Christian unity today is predicated on the idea of those groups abandoning their errors and returning to the Roman Catholic fold. The pope's problem seems to be that he is a theologian rather than a historian. Otherwise he could not possibly make such outrageous statements and think that they were compatible with the spirit of ecumenism that his immediate predecessors promoted.
One of the pope's most strident arguments against the validity of other Churches is that they can't trace their bishops' lineages back to the original apostles, as the bishops in the Roman Catholic Church can. There are three problems with this idea.
First, many Protestants deny the importance of apostolic succession as a guarantor of legitimacy. They would argue that faithfulness to the Bible and/or the teachings of Christ is a better measure of authentic Christian faith than the ability to trace one's spiritual ancestry through an ecclesiastical bureaucracy. A peripheral knowledge of the lives of some of the medieval and early modern popes (e.g., Stephen VI, Sergius III, Innocent VIII, Alexander VI) is enough to call the insistence on apostolic succession into serious question. Moreover, the Avignon Papacy and the divided lines of papal claimants in subsequent decades calls into serious question the legitimacy of the whole approach. Perhaps the strongest argument against the necessity of apostolic succession comes from the Apostle Paul, who was an acknowledged apostle despite not having been ordained by one of Jesus' original twelve disciples. In fact, Paul makes much of the fact that his authority came directly from Jesus Christ rather than from one of the apostles (Gal 1:11-12). Apostolic succession was a useful tool for combating incipient heresy and establishing the antiquity of the churches in particular locales, but merely stating that apostolic succession is a necessary prerequisite for being a true church does not make it so.
The second problem with the new document's insistence upon apostolic succession is the fact that at least three other Christian communions have apostolic succession claims that are as valid as that of the Roman Catholic Church. The Eastern Orthodox Churches, which split from the Roman Catholic Church in 1054, can trace their lineages back to the same apostles that the Roman Catholic Church can, a fact acknowledged by Unitatis Redintegratio 14. The Oriental Orthodox Churches, such as the Coptic and Ethiopic Orthodox Churches, split from the Roman Catholic Church several centuries earlier, but they too can trace their episcopal lineages back to the same apostles claimed by the Roman Catholic Church as its founders. Finally, the Anglican Church, which broke away from the Roman Catholic Church during the reign of King Henry VIII, can likewise trace the lineage of every bishop back through the first archbishop of Canterbury, Augustine. In addition to these three collections of Christian Churches, the Old Catholics and some Methodists also see value in the idea of apostolic succession, and they can trace their episcopal lineages just as far back as Catholic bishops can.
The third problem with the idea of apostolic succession is that the earliest bishops in certain places are simply unknown, and the lists produced in the third and fourth centuries that purported to identify every bishop back to the founding of the church in a particular area were often historically unreliable. Who was the founding bishop of Byzantium? Who brought the gospel to Alexandria? To Edessa? To Antioch? There are lists that give names (e.g., http://www.friesian.com/popes.htm), such as the Apostles Mark (Alexandria), Andrew (Byzantium), and Thaddeus (Armenia), but the association of the apostles with the founding of these churches is legendary, not historical. The most obvious breakdown of historicity in the realm of apostolic succession involves none other than the see occupied by the pope, the bishop of Rome. It is certain that Peter did make his way to Rome before the time of Nero, where he perished, apparently in the Neronian persecution following the Great Fire of Rome, but it is equally certain that the church in Rome predates Peter, as it also predates Paul's arrival there (Paul also apparently died during the Neronian persecution). The Roman Catholic Church may legitimately claim a close association with both Peter and Paul, but it may not legitimately claim that either was the founder of the church there. The fact of the matter is that the gospel reached Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Edessa, and other early centers of Christianity in the hands of unknown, faithful Christians, not apostles, and the legitimacy of the churches established there did not suffer in the least because of it.
All the talk in the new document about apostolic succession is merely a smokescreen, however, for the main point that the Congregation of the Faith and the pope wanted to drive home: recognition of the absolute primacy of the pope. After playing with the words "subsists in" (Lumen Gentium [Dogmatic Constitution on the Church] 8) and "church" (Unitatis Redintegratio 14) in an effort to make them mean something other than what they originally meant, the document gets down to the nitty-gritty. "Since communion with the Catholic Church, the visible head of which is the Bishop of Rome and the Successor of Peter, is not some external complement to a particular Church but rather one of its internal constitutive principles, these venerable Christian communities lack something in their condition as particular churches." From an ecumenical standpoint, this position is a non-starter. Communion with Rome and acknowledging the authority of the pope as bishop of Rome is a far different matter from recognizing the pope as the "visible head" of the entire church, without peer. The pope is an intelligent man, and he knows that discussions with other Churches will make no progress on the basis of this prerequisite, so the only conclusion that can be drawn is that the pope, despite his protestations, has no interest in pursuing ecumenism. Trying to persuade other Christians to become Roman Catholics, which is evidently the pope's approach to other Churches, is not ecumenism, it's proselytism.
Fortunately, this document does not represent the viewpoint of all Catholics, either laypeople or scholars. Many ordinary Catholics would scoff at the idea that other denominations were not legitimate Churches, which just happen to have different ideas about certain topics and different ways of expressing a common Christianity. Similarly, many Catholic scholars are doing impressive work in areas such as theology, history, biblical study, and ethics, work that interacts with ideas produced by non-Catholic scholars. In the classroom and in publications, Catholics and non-Catholics learn from each other, challenge one another, and, perhaps most importantly, respect one another.
How does one define the Church? Christians have many different understandings of the term, and Catholics are divided among themselves, as are non-Catholics. The ecumenical movement is engaged in addressing this issue in thoughtful, meaningful, and respectful ways. Will the narrow-minded view expressed in "Responses" be the death-knell of the ecumenical movement? Hardly. Unity among Christians is too important an idea to be set aside. Will the document set back ecumenical efforts? Perhaps, but Christians committed to Christian unity--Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant alike--will get beyond it. The ecumenical movement is alive and well, and no intemperate pronouncement from the Congregation of the Faith, or the current pope, can restrain it for long. Even if ecumenism, at least as it involves the Roman Catholic Church's connection with other Churches, is temporarily set back a hundred years, that distance can be closed either by changes of heart or changes of leadership.
Lucifer was the brightest light in the sky.
The individuals in the Catholic Church who by their commission or omission let these children slip away from His own flock shall pay dearly at the Judgement, I think.
Don't these children have a free will? ;)
Is it possible for a man not to sin?
Not as long as he's alive in this world. But the promise of Christ is that He has paid for every sin of His children, even tomorrow's. (Hebrews 10)
His perfect obedience saves us; not our own.
"For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous." -- Romans 5:19
I’m fascinated.
How could you be judged before you were born?
So what you are saying is that you are a robot slave some of the time and that the only time you get off your leash is to the extant that God wishes, and He directs you to do what He will anyway, so it’s not really free will, except when we sin, which is the only free will that we have, but He doesn’t let us have free will most of the time, so that we don’t sin most of the time...
I’m not sure that I follow.
Every deviation that came out of the Reformation movement, and that includes the Restoration movement is considered Protestant, by the words of the Reformers.
Mark was actually commenting on the callousness of the Protestant contingent here when referring to the numbers of the dead, whether 15 or 50 million.
I must learn to put my sarcasm button on. I had expected you folks to understand my position, having been relatively consistent over my posting history. I apologize and will attempt to communicate a little more directly.
Not true in the slightest.
No anti-Trinitarian is a Christian, let alone a Protestant, and is most especially not a reformed Christian.
Every reformed creed and doctrine upholds and declares the Scriptural truth of the Trinity.
But I do recognize the impulse of most RCs to label every non-RC as a Protestant, and therefore as "defective," according to the current bishop of Rome.
It's either that, or face up to the contradictions to Scripture within your theology.
But we are commissioned to bring the Word of God to all. If we by negligence do not present the Word to the children growing up in such a method as they will understand it, or we drive them away, as in the case of of the abusive priests, we do not act as He has commanded us.
If, in spite of excellent upbringing and environment, the individual leaves the Church for other pastures, and cannot be reached, then it is upon his soul, and not mine.
Are you going to claim that the Protestant movement was Christian, founded upon Christian beliefs and succeeded because it was Christian at the core?
The only reason that the Protestant heresies of Luther and Calvin and Zwingli succeeded to the extent that they did was because of the German, English and Swiss rulers who saw a method to assume greater autonomy and power.
Their heresies were no greater than in the first millennium; the big difference was in the readiness of the ruling class to take on religious excuses in order to take greater control.
The JWs and LDS and all those sects and cults that came out of the Protestant movement are the direct responsibility of the Reformers.
Either you have a central Church responsbile for canon and creed or else you have anarchy.
I blame Jim Jones and David Koresh and Charles Manson directly upon the shoulders of the Reformers because they made it possible in peoples’ minds to create their own religion. With everything that comes out of that.
You people are responsible for the actions; we are responsible for letting you. It’s going to be interesting to find out on the Judgement Day who has the greater culpability.
I wouldn't say according to the current bishop of Rome. He just restated what they have believed for a long time. It's one of their defects as Christians.
I know :>)
Is it irony, or prophesy? Time will tell.
That is an Excellent Post, Alamo-Girl! kosta50, what Alamo-Girl has Written in her Post #4257 are my Views, and what I would Write if I could. (I Praise God for the Gifts our Lord has Given to His Children; there are Some Awesome Posts on this Thread!)
Amen, and Amen, and that is a Comfort in my Own Life, that if our Lord Uses our Experiences to Bless Others, it Makes all these Sufferings of this Present Life Worthwhile. My Mission in Life is to be a Blessing to Others, even though I Fail Often, but our Lord has been So Merciful, So Gracious to me; I just Want to Lavish His Mercy, His Compassions, and His Grace on Everyone, because that is what He has Done for me. So Many Times I Fall, but He Always Picks me Up from the Dust; how can we Ever Praise Him Enough for the Wondrous Love He Shows? My Heart Worships him, and is Grateful for His Grace in Christ to His Lambs.
***I blame Jim Jones and David Koresh and Charles Manson directly upon the shoulders of the Reformers because they made it possible in peoples’ minds to create their own religion. With everything that comes out of that.***
If that is the case, you might as well blame the Catholic Church for Luther, Calvin, Spurgeon, etc.
Amen to your Wonderful Post, hosepipe!
I do.
The Catholic Church has a history of dealing with heretics of all sorts. We just didn’t deal with these heretics as well as we were supposed to.
Because, All who will Ever Trust Christ as their Savior were Placed in Him on the Cross, Figuratively, and our Punishment was Poured Out upon Him. "When He had by Himself Purged our Sins, He Sat Down on the Right Hand of the Majesty on High. (Heb.1:3) He Accomplished our Salvation, and Now we will Praise Him, Glorify Him, and Worship Him Forever. Great Things He has Done for us, and All Eternity will not be Long Enough to Thank Him for His Unmerited Grace!
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