Will the Pope's Pronouncement Set Ecumenism Back a Hundred Years? (Challenge to Apostolicity)

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.

I am combining my reply to you two because there was so much to cover and the replies are related to each other.

kosta50: What Alamo-Girl didn't tell us is that Einstien basically said that parallel lines were only a relative observer's phenomenon and that, in space, there are no true parallel lines; only convergent ones. In other words, Einstein postulated that parallel is a mathematical (ideal) condition that doesn't exist , except in Eucledian geometry. He postulated that the reality is not "flat" but curved and polar (i.e. that there is a common center to the universe towards all object will eventually fall).

General Relativity shows that straight lines do not physically exist. They do however exist in theory. The same is true of triangles and 180 degrees. Space/time is warped.

A “common center” is relative to a particular gravitational field. The moon, for instance, orbits around the common center which is “in” the earth.

Please provide your source for the claim that Einstein said there is a “common center to the universe towards all objects will eventually fall.”

That does not sound like something Einstein would have said because if there is a common center in the universe then the universe would rotate. And if the universe rotates, then it violates Mach’s Principle. Is the Universe Rotating?

It would have been quite a news item and cast doubt on General Relativity, IMHO. Moreover, if there exists a common center outside the universe, then the universe would be orbiting it.

For Lurkers interested in an introduction to Relativity with graphics:

Special Relativity

General Relativity

Getting back to the “Point in Infinity” which is defined as the intersection of two parallel lines, as the following source suggests you and jo kus can’t have it both ways – if parallel lines do not intersect, infinity does not exist:

University of Toronto

Do Parallel Lines Meet At Infinity?

Asked by a student at St-Joseph Secondary School on October 5, 1997:

Could you help me prove that parallel lines meet at infinity or that infinity begins where parallel lines meet.

I am curious. Could this ever happen?

The answer to the question depends on exactly what kind of geometry you are dealing with and what "points" and "lines" mean.

If you are talking about ordinary lines and ordinary geometry, then parallel lines do not meet. For example, the line x=1 and the line x=2 do not meet at any point, since the x coordinate of a point cannot be both 1 and 2 at the same time.

In this context, there is no such thing as "infinity" and parallel lines do not meet.

However, you can construct other forms of geometry, so-called non-Euclidean geometries. For example, you can take the usual points of the plane and attach to them an additional point called "infinity" and consider all lines to also include this additional point. In this context, there is a single "infinity" location where all lines meet. In a geometry like this, all lines intersect at infinity, in addition to any finite point where they might happen to meet.

Or, you could attach not just one additional point, but a whole collection of additional points, one for each direction. Then you can consider two parallel lines to meet at the extra point corresponding to their common direction, whereas two non-parellel lines do not intersect at infinity but intersect only at the usual finite intersection point. This is called projective geometry, and is described in more detail in the answer to another question.

In summary, then: in usual geometry, parallel lines do not meet. There is no such thing as infinity, and it is wrong to say that parallel lines meet at infinity.

However, you can construct other geometric systems, whose "points" include not only the points of familiar geometry (describable as coordinate pairs (x,y)), but also other objects. These other objects can be constructed in various ways, as described in the discussion of projective geometry. In these other geometric systems, parallel lines may meet at a "point at infinity". Whether this is one single point or different points for different classes of parallel lines, depends on the particular geometric system you are considering.

You may also be interested in our answers and explanations page, which contains a discussion of the question does infinity exist?

The bottom line is as I have said before – infinity is useful in mathematics but does not translate well to the physical realm which is finite.

As an example:

1/9 = 0.1111111111 ….
2/9 = 0.2222222222…
3/9 = 0.3333333333…
4/9 = 0.4444444444….
5/9 = 0.5555555555….
6/9 = 0.6666666666….
7/9 = 0.7777777777….
8/9 = 0.8888888888….
9/9 = 1

And in reply to jo kus:

I suggest you read Nicholas of Cusa and "On Learned Ignorance"

Nicholas of Cusa was a 15th century Bishop – way ahead of his time, no doubt. And to whatever extent he considered the - at that time widely discounted - theories of non-Euclidean geometry – it is to his credit.

In my opinion, his understanding of mathematics as a deeper revelation of the divine is far, far more important than his math theories.

From Plato through the likes of Gödel, Wigner, Barrow, Penrose, Tegmark and Vafa - mathematicians and physicists have noticed the mysteriousness of math and stood in awe of it though oftentimes unable to convince others who could not see what they were seeing. But Nicholas of Cusa’s understanding was much deeper than theirs because his was spiritual.

Nicholas of Cusa also saw what so many of us on this thread see and have commented on using different terms but the point is the same – that man cannot perceive God through sensory perception (“learned ignorance”.) He probably wouldn’t have used the metaphor I used earlier but the point is the same, i.e. that a maggot has a better chance of describing a human in terms sensible to a maggot than man has in describing God in terms sensible to a man.

And much like Einstein, Nicholas of Cusa perceived the universe is relative – laying the groundwork for Kepler’s laws of planetary motion and suggesting that perfect circles do not exist in a physical sense. Noting again here that Einstein's Relativity leads to the conclusion that straight lines do not exist in a physical sense.

But Nicholas of Cusa – like most everyone else until the 1960’s (Einstein included) – understood the universe to be steady state, physically infinite.

Nicholas of Cusa of course was long departed this world by then – but Einstein wasn’t. His reaction to the possibility (which was confirmed after his death) was to propose a cosmological constant. He later called that his worst mistake, it was kluged.

If Nicholas of Cusa were alive at the time, I imagine his reaction to the news that the universe is finite and expanding – that there was a beginning of real space and real time – would be much like that of Jastrow’s – i.e. that it is the most theological statement ever to come out of science. There was a beginning of space/time, an uncaused cause of causation itself – while the theologians were still reeling from the implications of Darwin’s theory here comes the most remarkable observation that God cannot be denied.

Jo kus: I think logically. The term "parallel lines" has a definition. If this definition is violated, it no longer IS a parallel line that we are discussing, but something else. If you have a triangle, and add another side to it, does it remain a triangle? Such speculations is nonsense to my mind. Parallel lines that intersect are not parallel lines anymore.

It is only nonsense to those who still embrace the concept that physical reality is Euclidean.

jo kus: And at WHICH point would these "parallel lines" intersect at? If you distinguish between two points in infinity, you have destroyed the definition of eternity! As you note elsewhere, and perhaps do not realize it, the “Line at Infinity” is the straight line on which all “Points at Infinity” lie. I agree, and have said as such. ALL points on an infinite line are the same. Thus, if you distinguish between two points, say one that intersection occurs and one point where intersection does NOT occur at, you have distinguished and ruined your definition.

me: Infinity is an unbounded quantity greater than every real number

Jo kus: I disagree. Infinity has no "quantity" because there is no distinction. Minimum and maximum are IDENTICAL! There is absolutely NO distinction in infinity. You have already admitted as such when you say "all points on an infinite line are the same". Infinity is not "one plus the last number"!

All points on a line extending to infinity, which is the quantity greater than every real number – except for infinity itself - are real numbers. They are finite. Think about it. Infinity is not physically real.

Also, I have not destroyed “the” definition of eternity, but rather challenged your definition of it. You are the one rejecting the definition of eternity as “time without end.”

jo kus: "Timelessness" means no time. Not "time without end". "Eternity" does NOT have a beginning. "Time without end" DOES! Thus, you are incorrect, as I have said before. Eternity and time without end are not the same thing.

Jo kus: I have already addressed this error. "time without end" is only projected in one direction. Eternity is without end in EITHER direction. Thus, there is no future or past in eternity. In "time without end", we realize that time has a starting point, but without end. That is TWO DIFFERENT things, A-G

Me: If it were “no time” or “timelessness” then it would be the ex nihilo - void, null, empty – which preceded God’s Creation of “all that there is” – both spiritual and physical

Jo kus: That is revelation. "Before" God created time, there was nothing. We believe God created from nothing.

Your belief that eternity does not have a beginning is theological. And of course, you are free to believe whatever you want to believe. As I have said before, there are people on this forum who believe that time is an illusion. And there are several others who believe that time does not exist at all – only the moment. Indeed, that is a common testimony from people who have visions.

And geometric physics (Vafa, Wesson, et al) has posited several theories of multiple temporal dimensions. If even one additional dimension of time exists, then time in our four dimensional perception (3 of space, 1 of time) is not a line but a plane. Past, present and future are all points on the plane. A change at a point, affects all points on the plane.

Sci-fi writers love these theories, of course.

Another Freeper extended the plane theory of time to volume. But since he, MHGinTN, is writing a book and this is one of its features, I will say no more.

As for me, I testify once again that eternity is relative to time – that God created both space and time, both spiritual and physical – whether time is a line, a plane, a volume or a moment only God knows. And what the character of time in the new heaven and new earth is (Revelation) also only God knows. To say that God exists in eternity – or that eternity is a property of God - is to anthropomorphize Him into a small ‘god’ our minds can comprehend.

God’s Name I AM has no time boundary or limitation at all. That is why “everlasting to everlasting” is sensible in speaking of God the Creator – there is no time in which He is not. And He is, i.e. He is not time-bound.

God’s Names Alpha and Omega are time relative only in the sense of First Cause and Final Cause. “All that there is” whether spiritual or physical was created by and for Jesus Christ, Who is the Only begotten Son of God.

That God speaks to us space/time bound creatures at all is a blessing. God the Father has revealed Himself to us through Jesus Christ, through the Holy Spirit, through Scriptures and through Creation, both spiritual and physical.

Nicholas of Cusa evidently saw a revelation of God in Creation, in the mathematics.

So do I. That is why I call the "unreasonable effectiveness of math" God's copyright notice on the Cosmos.

me: The Father is not begotten. Jesus Christ is begotten of the Father. The Spirit is from the Father by the Son.

Jo kus: "the Spirit PROCEEDS from the Father THROUGH the Son". The Father is the principle of the Spirit. Kosta, anything to add? Otherwise, you have expressed the catholic/orthodox trinitarian belief.

Kosta50: Insofar as A-G's statement "The Spirit is from the Father by the Son" makes the Son a necessary co-element in Spirit's procession, which is not the Trinitarian belief.

Personally, I eschew all the doctrines and traditions of men – so the official statements of your confession have no currency with me – only the words of God revealed through Scripture and the leading of the Holy Spirit:

But the Comforter, [which is] the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. – John 14:26

But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, [even] the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me: - John 15:26

Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you. – John 16:7

That God is Triune is revealed in the following verse – and in chapters 4 and 5 of Revelation:

But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. – Romans 8:9

To God be the glory!

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