How John Calvin Made me a Catholic

This is a guest post by Dr. David Anders. David and his wife completed their undergraduate degrees at Wheaton College in 1992. He subsequently earned an M.A. from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in 1995, and a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in 2002, in Reformation history and historical theology. He was received into the Catholic Church in 2003. He will be on EWTN Live on June 23rd, 7:00 pm Central (8 EST), and may be discussing some of the material from this article.

Portrait of Young John Calvin
Unknown Flemish artist
Espace Ami Lullin of the Bibliothèque de Genève

I once heard a Protestant pastor preach a “Church History” sermon. He began with Christ and the apostles, dashed through the book of Acts, skipped over the Catholic Middle Ages and leaped directly to Wittenberg, 1517. From Luther he hopped to the English revivalist John Wesley, crossed the Atlantic to the American revivals and slid home to his own Church, Birmingham, Alabama, early 1990s. Cheers and singing followed him to the plate. The congregation loved it.

I loved it, too. I grew up in an Evangelical Church in the 1970s immersed in the myth of the Reformation. I was sure that my Church preached the gospel, which we received, unsullied, from the Reformers. After college, I earned a doctorate in Church history so I could flesh out the story and prove to all the poor Catholics that they were in the wrong Church. I never imagined my own founder, the Protestant Reformer John Calvin, would point me to the Catholic faith.

I was raised a Presbyterian, the Church that prides itself on Calvinist origins, but I didn’t care much about denominations. My Church practiced a pared-down, Bible-focused, born-again spirituality shared by most Evangelicals. I went to a Christian college and then a seminary where I found the same attitude. Baptists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians and Charismatics worshiped and studied side-by-side, all committed to the Bible but at odds on how to interpret it. But our differences didn’t bother us. Disagreements over sacraments, Church structures, and authority were less important to us than a personal relationship with Christ and fighting the Catholic Church. This is how we understood our common debt to the Reformation.

When I finished seminary, I moved on to Ph.D. studies in Reformation history. My focus was on John Calvin (1509-1564), the French Reformer who made Geneva, Switzerland into a model Protestant city. I chose Calvin not just because of my Presbyterian background, but because most American Protestants have some relationship to him. The English Puritans, the Pilgrim Fathers, Jonathan Edwards and the “Great Awakening” – all drew on Calvin and then strongly influenced American religion. My college and seminary professors portrayed Calvin as a master theologian, our theologian. I thought that if I could master Calvin, I would really know the faith.

Strangely, mastering Calvin didn’t lead me anywhere I expected. To begin with, I decided that I really didn’t like Calvin. I found him proud, judgmental and unyielding. But more importantly, I discovered that Calvin upset my Evangelical view of history. I had always assumed a perfect continuity between the Early Church, the Reformation and my Church. The more I studied Calvin, however, the more foreign he seemed, the less like Protestants today. This, in turn, caused me to question the whole Evangelical storyline: Early Church – Reformation – Evangelical Christianity, with one seamless thread running straight from one to the other. But what if Evangelicals really weren’t faithful to Calvin and the Reformation? The seamless thread breaks. And if it could break once, between the Reformation and today, why not sooner, between the Early Church and the Reformation? Was I really sure the thread had held even that far?

Calvin shocked me by rejecting key elements of my Evangelical tradition. Born-again spirituality, private interpretation of Scripture, a broad-minded approach to denominations – Calvin opposed them all. I discovered that his concerns were vastly different, more institutional, even more Catholic. Although he rejected the authority of Rome, there were things about the Catholic faith he never thought about leaving. He took for granted that the Church should have an interpretive authority, a sacramental liturgy and a single, unified faith.

These discoveries faced me with important questions. Why should Calvin treat these “Catholic things” with such seriousness? Was he right in thinking them so important? And if so, was he justified in leaving the Catholic Church? What did these discoveries teach me about Protestantism? How could my Church claim Calvin as a founder, and yet stray so far from his views? Was the whole Protestant way of doing theology doomed to confusion and inconsistency?

Calvin was a second-generation Reformer, twenty-six years younger than Martin Luther (1483-1546). This meant that by the time he encountered the Reformation, it had already split into factions. In Calvin’s native France, there was no royal support for Protestantism and no unified leadership. Lawyers, humanists, intellectuals, artisans and craftsman read Luther’s writings, as well as the Scriptures, and adapted whatever they liked.

This variety struck Calvin as a recipe for disaster. He was a lawyer by training, and always hated any kind of social disorder. In 1549, he wrote a short work (Advertissement contre l’astrologie) in which he complained about this Protestant diversity:

I began to grasp the difference between Calvin and his descendants when I discovered his hatred of this theological diversity. Calvin was drawn to Luther’s theology, but he complained about the “crass multitude” and the “vulgar plebs” who turned Luther’s doctrine into an excuse for disorder. He wrote his first major work, The Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536), in part to address this problem.

Calvin got an opportunity to put his plans into action when he moved to Geneva, Switzerland. He first joined the Reformation in Geneva in 1537, when the city had only recently embraced Protestantism. Calvin, who had already begun to write and publish on theology, was unsatisfied with their work. Geneva had abolished the Mass, kicked out the Catholic clergy, and professed loyalty to the Bible, but Calvin wanted to go further. His first request to the city council was to impose a common confession of faith (written by Calvin) and to force all citizens to affirm it.

Calvin’s most important contribution to Geneva was the establishment of the Consistory – a sort of ecclesiastical court- to judge the moral and theological purity of his parishioners. He also persuaded the council to enforce a set of “Ecclesiastical Ordinances” that defined the authority of the Church, stated the religious obligations of the laity, and imposed an official liturgy. Church attendance was mandatory. Contradicting the ministers was outlawed as blasphemy. Calvin’s Institutes would eventually be declared official doctrine.

Calvin’s lifelong goal was to gain the right to excommunicate “unworthy” Church members. The city council finally granted this power in 1555 when French immigration and local scandal tipped the electorate in his favor. Calvin wielded it frequently. According to historian William Monter, one in fifteen citizens was summoned before the Consistory between 1559 and 1569, and up to one in twenty five was actually excommunicated.¹ Calvin used this power to enforce his single vision of Christianity and to punish dissent.

I studied Calvin for years before the real significance of what I was learning began to sink in. But I finally realized that Calvin, with his passion for order and authority, was fundamentally at odds with the individualist spirit of my Evangelical tradition. Nothing brought this home to me with more clarity than his fight with the former Carmelite monk, Jerome Bolsec.

In 1551, Bolsec, a physician and convert to Protestantism, entered Geneva and attended a lecture on theology. The topic was Calvin’s doctrine of predestination, the teaching that God predetermines the eternal fate of every soul. Bolsec, who believed firmly in “Scripture alone” and “faith alone,” did not like what he heard. He thought it made God into a tyrant. When he stood up to challenge Calvin’s views, he was arrested and imprisoned.

What makes Bolsec’s case interesting is that it quickly evolved into a referendum on Church authority and the interpretation of Scripture. Bolsec, just like most Evangelicals today, argued that he was a Christian, that he had the Holy Spirit and that, therefore, he had as much right as Calvin to interpret the Bible. He promised to recant if Calvin would only prove his doctrine from the Scriptures. But Calvin would have none of it. He ridiculed Bolsec as a trouble maker (Bolsec generated a fair amount of public sympathy), rejected his appeal to Scripture, and called on the council to be harsh. He wrote privately to a friend that he wished Bolsec were “rotting in a ditch.”²

What most Evangelicals today don’t realize is that Calvin never endorsed private or lay interpretation of the Bible. While he rejected Rome’s claim to authority, he made striking claims for his own authority. He taught that the “Reformed” pastors were successors to the prophets and apostles, entrusted with the task of authoritative interpretation of the Scriptures. He insisted that laypeople should suspend judgment on difficult matters and “hold unity with the Church.”³

Calvin took very seriously the obligation of the laity to submit and obey. “Contradicting the ministers” was one of the most common reasons to be called before the Consistory and penalties could be severe. One image in particular sticks in my mind. April, 1546. Pierre Ameaux, a citizen of Geneva, was forced to crawl to the door of the Bishop’s residence, with his head uncovered and a torch in his hand. He begged the forgiveness of God, of the ministers and of the city council. His crime? He contradicted the preaching of Calvin. The council, at Calvin’s urging, had decreed Ameaux’s public humiliation as punishment.

Ameaux was not alone. Throughout the 1540s and 1550s, Geneva’s city council repeatedly outlawed speaking against the ministers or their theology. Furthermore, when Calvin gained the right to excommunicate, he did not hesitate to use it against this “blasphemy.” Evangelicals today, unaccustomed to the use of excommunication, may underestimate the severity of the penalty, but Calvin understood it in the most severe terms. He repeatedly taught that the excommunicated were “estranged from the Church, and thus, from Christ.”⁴

If Calvin’s ideas on Church authority were a surprise to me, his thoughts on the sacraments were shocking. Unlike Evangelicals, who treat the theology of the sacraments as one of the “non-essentials,” Calvin thought they were of the utmost importance. In fact, he taught that a proper understanding of the Eucharist was necessary for salvation. This was the thesis of his very first theological treatise in French (Petit traicté de la Sainte Cène, 1541). Frustrated by Protestant disagreement over the Eucharist, Calvin wrote the text in an attempt to unify the movement around one single doctrine.

Evangelicals are used to finding assurance in their “personal relationship with Christ,” and not through membership in any Church or participation in any ritual. Calvin, however, taught that the Eucharist provides “undoubted assurance of eternal life.”⁵ And while Calvin stopped short of the Catholic, or even the Lutheran, understanding of the Eucharist, he still retained a doctrine of the Real Presence. He taught that the Eucharist provides a “true and substantial partaking of the body and blood of the Lord” and he rejected the notion that communicants receive “the Spirit only, omitting flesh and blood.”⁶.

Calvin understood baptism in much the same way. He never taught the Evangelical doctrine that one is “born again” through personal conversion. Instead, he associated regeneration with baptism and taught that to neglect baptism was to refuse salvation. He also allowed no diversity over the manner of its reception. Anabaptists in Geneva (those who practiced adult baptism) were jailed and forced to repent. Calvin taught that Anabaptists, by refusing the sacrament to their children, had placed themselves outside the faith.

Calvin once persuaded an Anabaptist named Herman to enter the Reformed Church. His description of the event leaves no doubt about the difference between Calvin and the modern Evangelical. Calvin wrote:

Evangelicals don’t understand this type of language. They are accustomed to treating “the Church” as a purely spiritual reality, represented across denominations or wherever “true believers” are gathered. This was not Calvin’s view. His was “the true Church,” marked off by infant baptism, outside of which there was no salvation.

Studying Calvin raised important questions about my Evangelical identity. How could I reject as unimportant issues that my own founder considered essential? I had blithely and confidently dismissed baptism, Eucharist, and the Church itself as “merely symbolic,” “purely spiritual” or, ultimately, unnecessary. In seminary, too, I found an environment where professors disagreed entirely over these issues and no one cared! With no final court of appeal, we had devolved into a “lowest common denominator” theology.

Church history taught me that this attitude was a recent development. John Calvin had high expectations for the unity and catholicity of the faith, and for the centrality of Church and sacrament. But Calvinism couldn’t deliver it. Outside of Geneva, without the force of the state to impose one version, Calvinism itself splintered into factions. In her book Orthodoxies in Massachusetts: Rereading American Puritanism, historian Janice Knight details how the process unfolded very early in American Calvinism. ⁸

It is not surprising that by the eighteenth century, leading Calvinist Churchmen on both sides of the Atlantic had given up on the quest for complete unity. One new approach was to stress the subjective experience of “new birth” (itself a novel doctrine of Puritan origins) as the only necessary concern. The famous revivalist George Whitefield typified this view, going so far as to insist that Christ did not want agreement in other matters. He said:

Since the eighteenth century, Calvinism has devolved more and more into a narrow set of questions about the nature of salvation. Indeed, in most people’s minds the word Calvinism implies only the doctrine of predestination. Calvin himself has become mainly a shadowy symbol, a myth that Evangelicals call upon only to support a spurious claim to historical continuity.

The greatest irony in my historical research was realizing that Evangelicalism, far from being the direct descendant of Calvin, actually represents the failure of Calvinism. Whereas Calvin spent his life in the quest for doctrinal unity, modern Evangelicalism is rooted in the rejection of that quest. Historian Alister McGrath notes that the term “Evangelical,” which has circulated in Christianity for centuries, took on its peculiar modern sense only in the twentieth century, with the founding of the National Association of Evangelicals (1942). This society was formed to allow coordinated public action on the part of disparate groups that agreed on “the new birth,” but disagreed on just about everything else.¹⁰

I grew up believing that Evangelicalism was “the faith once for all delivered to the saints.” I learned from Protestant Church history that it was hardly older than Whitefield, and certainly not the faith of the Protestant Reformers. What to do? Should I go back to the sixteenth century and become an authentic Calvinist? I already knew that Calvin himself, for all his insistence on unity and authority, had been unable to deliver the goods. His own followers descended into anarchy and individualism.

I realized instead that Calvin was part of the problem. He had insisted on the importance of unity and authority, but had rejected any rational or consistent basis for that authority. He knew that Scripture totally alone, Scripture interpreted by each individual conscience, was a recipe for disaster. But his own claim to authority was perfectly arbitrary. Whenever he was challenged, he simply appealed to his own conscience, or to his subjective experience, but he denied that right to Bolsec and others. As a result, Calvin became proud and censorious, brutal with his enemies, and intolerant of dissent. In all my reading of Calvin, I don’t recall him ever apologizing for a mistake or admitting an error.

It eventually occurred to me that Calvin’s attitude contrasted sharply with what I had found in the greatest Catholic theologians. Many of them were saints, recognized for their heroic charity and humility. Furthermore, I knew from reading them, especially St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Teresa of Avila and St. Francis de Sales, that they denied any personal authority to define doctrine. They deferred willingly, even joyfully, to the authority of Pope and council. They could maintain the biblical ideal of doctrinal unity (1 Corinthians 1:10), without claiming to be the source of that unity.

These saints also challenged the stereotypes about Catholics that I had grown up with. Evangelicals frequently assert that they are the only ones to have “a personal relationship with Christ.” Catholics, with their rituals and institutions, are supposed to be alienated from Christ and Scripture. I found instead men and women who were single-minded in their devotion to Christ and inebriated with His grace.

The Catholic theologian who had the greatest impact on me was undoubtedly St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430). All of my life, I heard the claim that “the Early Church” had been Protestant and Evangelical. My seminary professors and even Calvin and Luther always pointed to St. Augustine as their great Early Church hero. When I finally dug into Augustine, however, I discovered a thorough-going Catholicism. Augustine loved Scripture and spoke profoundly about God’s grace, but he understood these in the fully Catholic sense. Augustine destroyed the final piece of my Evangelical view of history.

In the end, I began to see that everything good about Evangelicalism was already present in the Catholic Church – the warmth and devotion of Evangelical spirituality, the love of Scripture and even, to some extent, the Evangelical tolerance for diversity. Catholicism has always tolerated schools of thought, various theologies and different liturgies. But unlike Evangelicalism, the Catholic Church has a logical and consistent way to distinguish the essential from the non-essential. The Church’s Magisterium, established by Christ (Matthew 16:18; Matthew 28:18-20), has provided that source of unity that Calvin sought to replace.

One of the most satisfying things about my discovery of the Catholic Church is that it fully satisfied my desire for historical rootedness. I began to study history believing in that continuity of faith and trying desperately to find it. Even when I thought I had found it in the Reformation, I still had to contend with the enormous gulf of the Catholic Middle Ages. Now, thanks to what Calvin taught me, there are no more missing links. On November 16, 2003 I finally embraced the faith “once for all delivered to the Saints.” I entered the Catholic Church.

“The Consistory of Geneva, 1559-1569,” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 38 (1976): 467-484. [↩]

Letter to Madame de Cany, 1552. [↩]

Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. J. T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960: 3.2.3, 4.3.4. [↩]

Institutes 4.12.9. [↩]

Institutes 4.17.32. [↩]

Institutes 4.17.17; 4.17.19. [↩]

Letters of John Calvin, trans. M. Gilchrist, ed. J.Bonnet, New York: Burt Franklin, 1972, I: 110-111. [↩]

Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994. [↩]

Cited in Mark A. Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism: The Age of Edwards, Whitefield and the Wesleys. Downers Grove: IVP, 2003, 14. [↩]

Evangelicalism and the Future of Christianity. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1995, 17-23. [↩]

Pope Leo’s Encyclical trumps what was written in the 15th Century and was a step towards unity

ORIENTALIUM DIGNITAS
On the Churches of the East
by Pope Leo XIII
November 30, 1894
http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Leo13/l13orient.htm

Excerpt

The Churches of the East are worthy of the glory and reverence that they hold throughout the whole of Christendom in virtue of those extremely ancient, singular memorials that they have bequeathed to us. For it was in that part of the world that the first actions for the redemption of the human race began, in accord with the all-kind plan of God. They swiftly gave forth their yield: there flowered in first blush the glories of preaching the True Faith to the nations, of martyrdom, and of holiness. They gave us the first joys of the fruits of salvation. From them has come a wondrously grand and powerful flood of benefits upon the other peoples of the world, no matter how far-flung. When blessed Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, intended to cast down the manifold wickedness of error and vice, in accord with the will of Heaven, he brought the light of divine Truth, the Gospel of peace, freedom in Christ to the metropolis of the Gentiles.

It has most especially been the habit of the Roman Church, the head of all the Churches, to render to the Churches of the East a great degree of honor and love in remembrance of the Apostles, to rejoice in her turn in their faithful obedience. Amidst changing and difficult times, she has never failed in any way in farsightedness and acts of kindness to sustain them against the forces that would strike them again and again, to hold fast to those that were overwhelmed, to call back those in discord with her. Nor was it the last expression of her watchfulness that she guard and preserve in them whole and entire forever the customs and distinct forms for administering the sacraments that she had declared legitimate in her wise jurisdiction. Examples of this are the many decisions of Our Predecessors, in the first place Pius IX of happy memory, promulgated in their own pontifical acts or through documents issuing from the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith. We ourselves have felt the prompting of no lesser zeal. At the very beginning of Our Pontificate, We turned eyes full of love towards the Christian nations of the East. We made haste, in fact, to direct Our solicitude to alleviating their state of want. We then saw the beginning of other opportunities for bearing witness to Our feelings of kind regard and expressing them in deeds. But nothing was nor is more important, nothing more sacred than to kindle the ardor, to elicit fruitfulness in the Faith in those souls in union with the Apostolic See, so that they shine forth as renewed proofs of the excellence and glory of their ancestors.

It has been possible to offer these Churches some assistance. We have founded in this very City a college for the formation of Armenian and Maronite clergy, likewise at Plovdiv and Edirne for those of the Bulgarian rite. We have decreed the construction of the Leonianum in Athens. We have fostered in larger measure the Seminary of St. Anne that was begun for the instruction of the Greek Melkite clergy in Jerusalem. Our activity includes increasing the number of Syrian students in the Urbanianum, restoring the Athanasianum for the Greeks to its pristine condition. This is the institute that Gregory XIII, its generous founder, wisely wished built. From it have issued men of great renown. We ardently wish - now all the more intensely - that We shall be able to cause and see with Our own eyes more activity of this and like type. God willing, We shall bring this plan long considered to completion by a unique letter of appeal to all leaders and peoples of the world, calling them to blessed unity in the divine Faith. Clearly, out of all the Christian nations that have been torn away from Us, We have striven to call out to the Christians of the East in the first place, to exhort them, to beseech them with the most heartfelt and paternal love.

We have begun to have hope, We are fostering it because its realization would be a great cause for joy, and, it is a fact, We are pursuing more strenuously this work so profitable for the salvation of many. Our goal is to discharge to the utmost degree whatever may be hoped for from the prudent direction of the Apostolic See. The reasons for rivalry and suspicion must be removed; then the fullest energies can be marshaled for reconciliation. We consider this of paramount importance to preserving the integrity proper to the discipline of the Eastern Churches. For Our part, We have ever rendered extreme attention and concern for this endeavor. In this vein, We have already given instructions for establishing schools to form young clerics of their nationalities. We shall give a like instruction for erecting other institutes. In them the students will cultivate their rites with the greatest devotion, observe them, and have full knowledge of their usages. In point of fact there is more importance than can be believed in preserving the Eastern rites. Their antiquity is august, it is what gives nobility to the different rites, it is a brilliant jewel for the whole Church, it confirms the God-given unity of the Catholic Faith.

For that very reason, even as her Apostolic origin is all the more proven especially by these Churches of the East, at the selfsame moment there shines out and is made manifest these Churches’ original, complete unity with the Roman Church. Nothing else, perhaps, is so breathtakingly effective for illustrating the mark of Catholicity in God’s Church than that striking sight of differing forms of ceremonies and noble examples of the tongues of the ancient past - made all the more noble by their use by the Apostles and Fathers - rendering their submission to the Church. This is almost an image of that most excellent submission that was rendered to the newly-born Christ, the divine Founder of the Church, when the Magi were drawn from the different regions of the East and came to adore Him1.

At this place it is opportune to notice the fact that the sacred rites, although not instituted specifically for proving the truth of the dogmas of the Catholic Faith incontrovertibly, are effectively the living voice of Catholic Truth, the oft-sounded expression of it. For that very reason the true Church of Christ, even as she shows great zeal to guard inviolate those forms of divine worship - since they are hallowed and are not to be changed - sometimes grants or permits something novel in the performance of them in certain instances. This she does especially when they are in conformity with their venerable antiquity. By this means, her vitality does not appear ever-aging; she stands out more wondrously as the very Bride of Christ whom the wisdom of the Holy Fathers recognized in prefigurement in the words of David: The queen stood at your right hand arrayed in apparel embroidered with spun gold she is clothed with embroidery of diverse figures and spun gold fringe2.

Inasmuch as this diversity of liturgical form and discipline of the Eastern Churches is approved in law, besides its other merits, it has redounded tremendously to the glory and usefulness of the Church. They ought not figure any less as subjects of Our charge. So much is this the case that it is in the best interest of all that their discipline not haphazardly borrow anything that would be ill-suited from Western ministers of the Gospel whom love for Christ compels to go to those peoples. The decisions that Our illustrious Predecessor Benedict XIV in his wisdom and foresight decreed in the Constitution of 24 December 1743 remain in force. This constitution was addressed as a letter to the Greek Melkite Patriarch of Antioch and to all the Bishops of that rite subject to him. The truth is that in the long course of time, given that the state of affairs has changed in those regions, that Latin rite missionaries and institutes have multiplied there as well, it now happens that some of the special concerns of the Apostolic See on the new conditions should be set out.

Frequently in recent years We recognized that this would be very useful: Our Venerable Brethren, the Patriarchs in the East, confirmed Our desires in very similar terms more than once in correspondence. That the result of this deliberation might be made more plain and intelligible and that well-suited, far-sighted plans be defined, We thought it well to invite those same Patriarchs to Rome and confer with them over what they might advise. Then We convened in Our presence a meeting with them that was well attended by some of Our beloved sons, the Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church, to deliberate on this matter. After weighing carefully and with due reflection all those matters that were put forward and discussed in conference, We resolved to make more explicit and far-reaching certain of the measures set out in the Constitution of Benedict XIV that would be more in keeping with the new state of affairs prevailing in these nations. For the execution of this, We single out this directive from among them as their fundamental condition for success: Latin rite priests are to be sent to those regions by the Apostolic See only for the purpose of assisting or helping the Patriarchs or Bishops there. The former are to be careful not to use the faculties granted them for acting in a way prejudicial to the Patriarchs or Bishops or for reducing the number of their subjects3. By the force of these laws, evidently, the duties of the Latin clergy are to be kept within their proper limits in their relations with the Eastern rite hierarchy.

Inasmuch as the following protocols have seemed proper to ordain and sanction in Our Lord, by Our Apostolic Authority We do declare now that it is Our will and decree that the aforesaid decree of Benedict XIV originally promulgated respecting the Greek Melkites, now apply globally to all the faithful of any Eastern rite whatever.

1. Any Latin rite missionary, whether of the secular or religious clergy, who induces with his advice or assistance any Eastern rite faithful to transfer to the Latin rite, will be deposed and excluded from his benefice in addition to the ipso facto suspension a divinis and other punishments that he will incur as imposed in the aforesaid Constitution Demandatam. That this decree stand fixed and lasting We order a copy of it be posted openly in the churches of the Latin rite.

2. When an Eastern Patriarch lacks a priest of his own rite to whom he may entrust the spiritual governance of his own subjects, a pastor of another rite may undertake the care of those parishioners. He is to consecrate the same species, i.e., azyme or leavened bread, that the parishioners’ rite employs. Priests of an Eastern rite are to be preferred. To the faithful it is granted to receive Communion in any rite, not only in those locales where there is no church or priest of their own rite - as in the decree of the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith of 18 August 1893 - but also, when owing to the great distance of a church of their own rite, they are unable to assist except with serious inconvenience. In this case the judgment belongs to the Ordinary. This principle remains unchanged: One who receives Communion in another rite, even for a long time, is not on that account to be considered to have changed his rite. As regards all other obligations, he continues to be subject to the pastor of his parish.

3. Latin rite societies of religious men that are engaged in the education of the young in the East, if they have a large number of Eastern rite students in their institute, are to consult with the Patriarch and provide for the benefit of these students in their institute a priest of the same rite for the celebration of the Sacred Synaxis, that is, the Sacrifice of the Mass, for the teaching of catechism in their native tongue, and explaining their ritual. At the least, they are to obtain such a priest to fulfill these duties on Sundays and holy days of obligation. For this reason, We decree that any privileges that students of an Eastern rite follow the Latin rite in these institutes that these societies may enjoy, even those deserving special mention, are removed. The institutes’ directors may employ religious discretion regarding the keeping of the fasts prescribed. Like provisions are to be made for day students. They must be sent back or induced to attend their own parish churches, unless it seem appropriate that they be admitted to the same sacred rites as the boarding students.

4. The same provisions are to be applied to the fullest degree possible in institutes of religious women dedicated to the education of girls in convents or schools. But if any change in these provisions seems beneficial, owing to particular conditions or circumstances, they are not to be enacted before the Patriarch give his assent and it be ratified by the Apostolic See.

5. New schools or religious houses of the Latin rite for either gender are not to be opened in future except by a grant of a petition to the Apostolic See.

6. It is not lawful for Latin or Eastern rite priests to give absolution, either in churches of their own rite or those of another rite, in cases that are reserved to the subject’s Ordinary, unless the faculty has been granted by them. We entirely revoke any privilege to the
contrary of these prescriptions, even one worthy of specific mention.

7. Any person of an Eastern rite who has transferred to the Latin rite, even when this has been authorized by Pontifical rescript, shall be permitted to return to his original rite, upon petitioning the Apostolic See.

8. A woman of the Latin rite who marries a man of an Eastern rite, and likewise a woman of an Eastern rite who marries a man of the Latin rite, has the freedom to transfer to her husband’s rite at the beginning of or any time during their marriage. When the marriage bond is ended, she will have the power to resume her former rite.

9. Anyone of an Eastern rite that resides outside the patriarchal territory will be under the administration of the Latin clergy; he shall, however, remain reckoned as belonging to his own rite. By means of this, neither length of time nor any other reason shall in any way alter his being subject to his Patriarch once he return to his territory.

10. It is not lawful for any Latin rite Order or Religious Institute for either gender to receive into their society anyone of an Eastern rite who will not have first presented testimonial letters of his own Ordinary.

11. If any community, family, or person from among the dissidents come to Catholic unity but make it almost a necessary condition that they embrace the Latin rite, they may remain bound to the obligations of this rite for the time being. It will remain, however, in their power at any time in the future to return to their native Catholic rite. If such a condition not be interposed, but the community, family, or person is under the administration of Latin rite priests because of a lack of ones of an Eastern rite, they are to be restored to the practice of their proper rite as soon as there are enough Eastern rite priests.

12. Any cases whatever for a matrimonial or other ecclesiastical tribunal over which an appeal be made to the Apostolic See, are in no way to be decided by the Apostolic Delegates except they be expressly authorized. All such cases are to be referred to the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith.

13. We have granted to the Greek Melkite Patriarch jurisdiction also over those faithful of the same rite who reside within the Ottoman Empire.

Besides these specific precautions and regulations of law, as We touched on above, We have the greatest concern that seminaries, schools, and institutes of all types be built in more advantageous locales in the East, and most especially those for the priestly formation of native men in their own ancestral rite to help their own people. We have resolved upon this course of action; it is difficult to say with just how much zeal and devotion We hope to attempt it, to advance it, relying greatly, as We do, upon the support and resources of Catholics.

We recently made clear in an encyclical letter that We issued last year on the erection of colleges for clergy in East India, that the efforts of indigenous priests, since they direct them in ways more congruent with their Churches’ particular situation and undertake them more avidly, will be more fruitful than those of foreigners.

Thus in future, steps having definitively been taken for the sacred instruction of youths, distinction in theological and biblical studies will increase among Eastern rite Catholics. Their erudition in ancient languages will be just as strong as their aptitude for modern ones. Their perceptiveness in doctrine and scholarship, in which the Fathers and their writers overflowed, will more broadly advance the common good. From this most desired outcome may arise in the end an increased knowledge of the truths of the faith among the Catholic priesthood.

They may then commend to others their own bright example of integral knowledge, and Our dissident brethren may seek out more readily the embrace of their Mother, the Church. If then the clerical orders unite their spirits, their zeal, their energies in true fraternal charity, with God’s grace and guidance, the most auspicious day will quickly arrive when, as all are come together to the unity of the faith and of the deep knowledge of the Son of God; thereby, fully and completely, the whole body (being closely joined and knit together through every joint of the system according to the functioning in due measure of each single part) derives its increase to the building up of itself in love4. Doubtless, she alone can exult in being the true Church of Christ, in whom the one body and one Spirit5 subsist.

Assuredly, Our Venerable Brethren, the Patriarchs, Archbishops, and Bishops of whatever Eastern Catholic rite will undertake with all reverence and obedience each and every of these Our decrees in virtue of that piety that they manifest for the Apostle’s Chair and for Ourselves, as also in virtue of their solicitude for their own Churches. In their zeal they will cause their complete observance by those whom these decrees concern. The abundance of fruits that may thereby then rightfully and with certainty be expected will come forth especially from the labor of those who represent Our Person throughout the Christian East. It is Our will that the Apostolic Delegates respect with due reverence the traditions established by the ancestors of these nations as a highly esteemed prize.

They are to pay suitable honor to the authority of the Patriarchs, and take pains that this honor be given. In the conduct of their duties with them, they will follow the Apostle’s counsel: Anticipate one another with honor6. They are to act with enthusiasm and good will for the bishops, clergy, and people, recalling in themselves that spirit with which the Apostle John conducted himself when he gave the Apocalypse to the seven Churches that are in Asia, greeting them: Grace be to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come7.

In every course of action let them show themselves true heralds and peacemakers of holy unity between the Eastern Churches and the Roman Church, which is the center of unity and charity. In accord with what We herein exhort and command, Latin rite priests who go to these excellent labors in the regions of the East for the eternal salvation of souls are to display like sentiments, conduct themselves in like fashion. God will truly give abundant increase to those who toil religiously in obedience to the Roman Pontiff.

Therefore, whatever We have determined, declared, and sanctioned in this letter, We will and command to be kept inviolate by all to whom they pertain; these prescriptions cannot be stigmatized, called into dispute, nor infringed for any reason, excuse, or pretext, including one arising from privilege. They have full and complete force, notwithstanding any Apostolic constitutions, even those issued in general and provincial councils, any statutes, customs, and prescriptions confirmed by Apostolic rescript or any other writ. We specifically and expressly modify and will to be modified all laws according to the sense of the foregoing letter just as if they had been emended in this letter word by word, as well as all other acts whatever of a contrary intention. It is Our will that copies of this Letter be printed, subscribed by Our Notary and once sealed by this person constituted for this ecclesiastical dignity have the same authority as this Letter would when presented.

Given at Rome, at St. Peter’s, the thirtieth of November, in the year of Our Lord’s Incarnation one thousand eight hundred ninety-four, the seventeenth of Our Pontificate.

1. Mt 2.2.
2. Ps 44:14-15.
3. Const. Demandatam, 13.
4. Eph. 4:13, 16.
5. Eph. 4:4.
6. Rom. 12:10.
7. Rev. 1:4.

ENGLISH TRANSLATION: Edward Stickland, 1996.
as found in The Vatican and the Eastern Christian Churches:
Papal Encyclicals and Documents concerning the Eastern Churches.
Volume. Eastern Christian Publications: Fairfax, Virginia, 1996; pp. 179-189.

5. New schools or religious houses of the Latin rite for either gender are not to be opened in future except by a grant of a petition to the Apostolic See.

13. We have granted to the Greek Melkite Patriarch jurisdiction also over those faithful of the same rite who reside within the Ottoman Empire.

Kosta-”This is one of the reasons why I decided to leave the Church and consider all things religious as man-made agenda.”

That is very sad! It gives me another reason to go back to Adoration today to pray for you again

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