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.
Foxes book is fictional.
not saying you are protestant —> I’m just saying that you’re picking and choosing what you call “Witness testimony” and what you don’t agree with, no basis on that.
Learn a little about Calvinism before you start criticizing it.
So, you’d believe anything that was anti-Catholic, just on that basis?
John 5:24 [ Life and Judgment Are Through the Son ] “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life.
My brain is working very slowly this morning. In looking for where this was it became clear how complex a topic judgment is. There are many kinds of judgment but the eternal live vs death one is satisfied in Him and believing in His name.
Well, let’s take it one point at a time. And there is nothing secretive about any of it - you are as free as I am to go to New Advent or the USCCB site or the Vatican site and peruse the files. If I am in error, I would be grateful for you or for anyone else to correct me, whether he be Catholic or no.
I’d also be interested in finding these aimiable atheists. I can’t say as I’ve run across many. :)
The Catholic Church, following St. Augustine (e.g., Grace and Free Will, 1,1; Sermon 169, 11,13), accepts predestination of the elect to heaven, but also affirms the freedom of the human will, thus staking out a position distinct from Calvinism. Predestination to hell, in Catholicism, always involves man’s free will, and foreseen sins, so that man is ultimately responsible for his own damnation, not God (double predestination is rejected).
The Catholic Church affirms predestination as a de fide dogma (the highest level of binding theological certainty), while at the same time affirming free will and the possibility of falling away from the faith.
Any theological position on election, however, must conform with the Church’s soteriological teachings. Molinism, Thomism, and Arminianism all conform, Calvinism does not. To conform, your theology must accept the following:
1) Free will; that is, God allows people to choose him, and allows them to reject them. People always have the option. Thus election, if you believe it, must be an act of persuasion and not compulsion.
2) Co-operation; it is necessary for salvation for a man to cooperate with God’s grace. Man must continuously allow God’s grace to work in him. If at any point a man prevents this, he falls from grace.
3) Jesus died for all men, and his sacrifice has the potential of saving all, but his act did not automatically save anyone, only those who choose to accept him.
4) Man is born in a state of sin, and must be called by God in order to accept Him and thus receive the merits of Christ’s sacrifice.
5) God predestines no one to Hell. i.e. you can only believe in negative reprobation, not positive.
There are, of course, many other teachings on salvation, but these are the main ones. Thomism, unlike Calvinism, accepts all of them. The main difference between the various schools of thought is how the calling grace of point 4 get dispensed, and its effects.
That whole wafer business is commanded to us three times, not just once. And we are commanded to do to; it isn’t just a suggestion.
Protestants may be following a damaged institution, yet some individuals within may be Judged by God to the Kingdom of Heaven. There are undoubtedly more holy Protestants than me and more than likely a whole bunch of them. If I am this far from purity right now, just imagine where I’d be given an individualist Protestant theology. As it is, I’m thinking of stocking up on asbestos underwear.
There are two types of proclamations - call them doctrinal and disciplinal. If the Church decides to enforce the no meat on Friday deal, that is a discipline and can vary accoriding to the century. Doctrinal matters, on the other hand, are not rescinded and are considered infallible.
Perhaps the early Christians were the elect - they got in on the ground floor and are now the equivalent of Microsoft millionaires. I’m not sure of that point. Perhaps someone could help out here?
Actually, the early Church had the wandering Bishops come by and scrutinize, instruct and admonish them. They weren’t little enclaves that operated in a vacuum. They came under the strict control of their Bishops.
And when the little enclaves wandered too far from the Church and into heresy, and wouldn’t come back, they were excommunicated.
If you go into the Baptist or CoC models, there is tremendous autonomy at the local levels, much more than that of the early Church. The Church Fathers had the authority and the responsibility to run the Church; not the locals.
According to Paul, He did. According to the Gospels, He doesn't force Himself on anyone.
At least four times in the New Testament Paul declares himself to be..."Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God" (2 CORINTHIANS 1:1; EPHESIANS 1:1; COLOSSIANS 1:1; 2 TIMOTHY 1:1.)
I think you said it right: declares himself to be. Therein is the "problem."
You're missing the point of it all, I'm afraid. Christ fully accomplished what we could never do, even in small part -- He paid for every one of our sins in full for all time
His death was to get everyone out of jail to which all of humanity has been destined by Adam's fall. Now that we are free, we have to make sure we don't end up there again.
"Do not marvel at this; for an hour is coming, in which all who are in the tombs will hear His voice, and will come forth; those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of life, those who committed the evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment. [John 5:28-30 ]
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what Christ taught about who is pardoned and who is condemned in the end and why. No, Dr. E, no one is saved yet. We are only free to be saved. And that depends on what we all will have done in our lifetime as free souls. Unfortunately, many a Christian is misled by Luther's heresy into believing we are "safe."
Clearly, judgment is not understood to be "rewards" in heaven as some Protestants have been led to believe, but punishment that awaits all who committed evil and have never repented. How many of those will be in the camp of those who believe that they had no reason to repent because the Spirit had "perfected" them and Christ had paid their dues in full?
A denomination having civil power to kill and persecute is wrong.. no matter what they believed..
No --- I would ask them the same thing that I am asking you: Where is your evidence??? Accusations against those who cannot defend themselves and whose literature and bibles were all summarily burned by Crusaders on the orders of Pope "Guilty" III do not constitute evidence.
One of the traditional Vatican-inspired accusations against them was that they did not believe in having children, and yet the Vatican claimed that they had to be stopped out because they were growing too fast. So which was it????Which "Bull" are you going to believe ----
The Crusades were defensive actions against Islam -- do you support Islam?? Islam had conquered the Christian lands of North Africa, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Anatolia (Turkey) etc. etc. and was forcibly converting people. The Western world reacted when pilgrims to Jerusalem were getting killed and when the Moslem rulers burnt down the Holy Churches in the Holy City. You support them, the Muslims?
The Crusades were not defensive wars against Islam.
They were attempts to claim what wasn't Rome's right to claim, the Jewish land.
And when they took Jerusalem they proceded to murder Jews by the thousands.
You are right: it is undeniable that Latin was the language of commerce and communication and of higher learning for centuries to come...I just think the other party is not interested in historical facts.
Thats true,... none no stranger than the Roman Catholic Church and its beliefs.. The very spirit behind the anti Sola Scriptura concept is pagan and cultic and Popish..
Jesus response to the Apostles when they debated who would be greatest in "heaven".. displays what Jesus thought about POPES.. You do know what his response was don't you?.. He MOCKED IT..
Please thank God for any wisdom in my post Brother.
Be careful that statement approaches anti-semitism.. Paints a fine line thats spurious.. For what purpose?... Hmmmm...
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