[The Spirit of Catholicism] [Previous] [Next]
And if he will not hear the Church, let him be to thee as the heathen and publican (Mt. xviii, 17).
The Catholic Church as the Body of Christ, as the realization in the world of the Kingdom of God, is the Church of Humanity. Of her essential nature she aims at the incorporation of the men of all times and all places in the one Body of Christ. Hence inevitably her external and internal catholicity, her accessibility and comprehensiveness. And hence also her exclusiveness, that is her claim to be the Church of Humanity, the exclusive institution wherein all men shall attain salvation. Because the Church is conscious that she is the Church of humanity and that Kingdom of God to which all men whatsoever by the will of Christ fundamentally belong, she cannot admit that men can be saved by membership in other societies established by the side of and in antagonism to the primary Church of Humanity founded by Christ. Even Heiler cannot deny the cogency of this position. "So far as Catholicism is genuinely universal and represents fully all religious values, it must be exclusive. But this exclusiveness is not the exclusiveness of narrowness, but of inexhaustible wealth.[1] The Church would belie her own deepest essence and her most outstanding quality, namely her inexhaustible fullness and that which guarantees and supports this fullness, her vocation to be the Body of Christ, if she were ever to recognize some collateral and antagonistic Christian church as her sister and as possessing equal rights with herself. She can recognize the historical importance of such churches. She can designate them as Christian communions, yes, even as Christian churches, but never as the Church of Christ. One God, one Christ, one Baptism, one Church. There can never be a second Christ, and in the same way there cannot be a second Body of Christ, a second manifestation of His spirit. When some American Christians went to Rome in the Spring of 1919 to invite Pope Benedict XV to take part in a "World Conference on Faith and Order," they misunderstood the Catholic conception of the Church and this its fundamental claim. The Catholic Church can and will appraise generously, and will countenance, all the communities of non-Catholic Christendom. She can and will recognize in them the first rudiments of a preparation for that re-union of all Christians which is demanded by the present state of Christendom in general and of the West in particular. But she cannot recognize other Christian communions as churches of like order and rights with herself. To do so would be infidelity to her own nature, and would be the worst disloyalty to herself. In her own eyes the Catholic Church is nothing at all if she be not the Church, the Body of Christ, the Kingdom of God. This exclusiveness is rooted in the exclusiveness of Christ, in His claim to be the bringer of the new life, to be the way, the truth and the life. The fullness of the Divinity was revealed to us in Christ. The Incarnate God is the last and most perfect self- revelation of God. God's wisdom, goodness and mercy became incarnate in Him. "Of His fullness we all have received, and grace for grace" (Jn. i, 16). And therefore there is no other road to God except through Christ. There is "no other name under heaven given to men, whereby they must be saved" (Acts iv, 12). But we can grasp Christ only through His Church. It is true that He might, had He so willed, have imparted Himself and His grace to all men directly, in personal experience. But the question is not what might have been, but what Christ in fact willed to do. And in fact He willed to give Himself to men through men, that is by the way of a community life and not by the way of isolation and individualism. He willed that His grace should come to men who were conjoined in a single compact fellowship, and that it should come to them through this fellowship, not without it, and still less in opposition to it. It was not His will to sanctify a countless multitude of solitary souls, but a corporate kingdom of saints, a Kingdom of God. And this method of communicating Himself corresponds entirely to His fundamental requirement, the commandment of fraternal love. For that commandment implies a community, implies the union of the brethren, and there can be no fraternal love without such a community. And it corresponds also to the essential nature of divine grace, which is offered to all men at once. The grace of God in its manifestation is a catholic power, comprehending and grasping all men. So that it cannot manifest itself otherwise than in absolute unity. There can be no contradiction, or dissension, or schism where God is. His truth cannot be otherwise than one truth, one life, one love. And therefore it can be realized in but one form, in a comprehensive fellowship that binds together all men in intimate unity.
From the very beginning, as St. Matthew testifies (xviii, 17) the necessity for salvation of belonging to the one fellowship was established on the basis of an express saying of our Lord's: "If a man will not hear the Church, let him be to thee as the heathen and publican," that is, regard him no longer as a Christian. St. Cyprian afterwards expressed this conviction of primitive Christianity in those clear-cut sentences which have impressed themselves on the memory of Christendom: "To have the one God for your Father, you must have the Church for your mother" (Ep. Ixxiv, 7). "No man can be saved except in the Church" (Ep. iv, 4). "Outside the Church there is no salvation" (Ep. Ixxiii, 21).
Thus was formulated that sentence which puts the Church's claim to be the only source of salvation in the most concise form: "Outside the Church no salvation" (Extra ecclesiam nulla salus). The Fourth Lateran Council (A.D. 1215) adopted this formula verbatim. In the so-called Athanasian Creed, which the Church admits among her confessions of faith, it is fully paraphrased: "Whosoever wishes to be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic faith. And if a man do not keep this faith inviolate and intact without doubt he will perish." More unmistakable still is the declaration of the Council of Florence that all pagans, Jews, heretics and schismatics have forfeited eternal life and are destined to everlasting fire.
Now there is no doubt, that if her catholicity gives the Church a world-wide and comprehensive character, her claim to be the only source of salvation turns her in upon herself and makes her aloof and exclusive. In contrast to her unlimited devotion to all values wherever they may be found, is her equally strong and unlimited assertion of and insistence on her own claims. The one is a necessary counterpoise to the other. Without her rigid and deliberate self-assertion, and without her immense concentration on herself, the catholicity of the Church, in its acceptance of all humanity, of the whole world and its values, would bring her dangerously near to a gradual decomposition of her true supernatural being, and induce a fusion of her essence with alien elements, that is to say syncretism. For the very reason that the Church, with the same vigor and momentum with which she devotes herself to the world, remembers her supernatural origin, her essential connection with Christ, and her exclusive possession of the power of salvation, she maintains the supernatural substance of her gospel and so preserves her capacity to elevate all the natural values which she takes over from the world into supernatural values, to permeate them with Christ and to uplift them to God. If her catholicity is a centrifugal force, then this exclusiveness of hers is a centripetal force. And the secret of her remaining true to herself in her fullness is that these two forces are maintained in exact equipoise, so that she is at once catholic and exclusive.
So there is no doubt about this matter. There is only one answer to the question whether other Christian communions have not also a vocation and a power to save men, and the Church is quite intolerant about it. For the very reason that these communions have set themselves up against the original unity of the brethren in faith and love, they appear to the Catholic consciousness as institutions which have not arisen out of the spirit of Jesus, and therefore as purely human and even anti-Christian creations. The Church cannot but anathematize them and she will continue to do so until the Lord comes.
It is psychologically quite intelligible that the adherents of non-Catholic communions should be grieved by the Church's dogmatic intolerance and disposed to regard it as the manifestation of a spirit which is foreign and even hostile to the spirit of Jesus, a spirit of uncharitableness and harsh severity. When the critic speaks of the Church's "fearful exclusiveness and intolerance"[2] he forgets that truth must always be "fearfully exclusive and intolerant." In the very same book he asserts that "a straight road leads from belief in Jesus regarded as the sole means of salvation to belief in the exclusive claim of the Church,"[3] which means that if we believe that Christ is the only name in heaven and on earth whereby we may be saved, we must believe also that true salvation is to be found only in the one Church which He founded. The one Christ and the one Body of Christ belong indissolubly together. He who rejects the one true Church is all too easily brought, as by an inexorable logic, to go astray also about Christ. As a matter of fact the history of revolt from the Church is at the same time a history of the progressive decomposition of the primitive faith in Christ.
So the truth stands fast, rigid and inexorable in its compact solidity, that there is but one Christ and but one justifying Church of Christ. But, we may ask, does that mean that all heretics and non-Catholics are destined to hell?
If we would interpret correctly the Catholic doctrine that there is no salvation outside the Church, that is to say if we would understand it as the Church would have it understood, we should grasp its history and its connection with the rest of her teaching. For no Catholic doctrine is an isolated mass of thought, but has on the contrary its proper place and meaning in the whole unitary system and cannot be fully appreciated except through this whole system.
To begin with, it is certain that the declaration that there is no salvation outside the Church is not aimed at individual non-Catholics, at any persons as persons, but at non- Catholic churches and communions, in so far as they are non-Catholic communions. Its purpose is to formulate positively the truth that there is but one Body of Christ and therefore but one Church which possesses and imparts the grace of Christ in its fullness. Stated otherwise the declaration would run: Every separated church which sets itself up against the original Church of Christ stands outside the communion of Christ's grace. It cannot be a mediator of salvation. So far as it is a separate and antagonistic church, it is essentially unfruitful as regards the supernatural life. So that that spiritual unfruitfulness which is predicated in the doctrine is not to be affirmed of the individual non-Catholic, but primarily of non-Catholic communions as such. By that which constitutes their separateness and differentiates them in faith and worship from the Catholic Church, they are able to awaken no supernatural life. Therefore, in so far as they are un-Catholic and anti-Catholic, that is to say in regard to their distinct character, they are not able to claim the honorable title of a "mother" church.
In saying so much we have already indicated the second dogmatic qualification which the proposition receives within the system of Catholic doctrine. For non-Catholic communions are not merely non-Catholic and anti-Catholic. When they set themselves up against the original Church of Christ, they took over and maintained a considerable amount of the Catholic inheritance, and also certain Catholic means of grace, in particular the sacrament of Baptism. They are therefore, if we regard them as a whole, not mere antithesis and negation, but also to a large extent thesis and affirmation of the ancient treasure of truth and grace that has come down to us from Christ and the apostles. Their churches are built not only of their own un-Catholic materials, but also of Catholic stuff from the original store of salvation. And in so far as they are genuinely Catholic in their faith and worship, it can and will and must happen that there should be, even outside the visible Church, a real growth and progress in union with Christ. So is the promise of Jesus fulfilled: "And other sheep I have that are not of this fold" (Jn. x, 16). Wherever the Gospel of Jesus is faithfully preached, and wherever baptism is conferred with faith in His Holy Name, there His grace can operate. When the disciples would have forbidden a man who had not attached himself to Jesus from casting out devils in His Name, Our Lord declared: "Forbid him not. For there is no man that doth a miracle in my name and can soon speak ill of me. He that is not against you is for you" (Mk. ix, 38-39). The Church acted entirely in harmony with these words of our Lord when in her severe struggle with St. Cyprian and the African tradition and afterwards in prolonged controversy with the Donatists, she upheld the validity of baptism in the Name of Jesus conferred by heretics. And it was Rome, Rome that is so violently attacked for her intolerance, and Pope Stephen, who even at the peril of an African schism would not allow heretical baptism to be impugned. The Church practices the same toleration with regard to the valid administration of the other sacraments, so far as their nature requires only the power of orders and not also the power of jurisdiction. In those non-Catholic bodies in which the apostolic succession has been maintained by means of valid episcopal ordinations, as in the schismatic churches of the East, and in the Jansenist and Old-Catholic churches, she still recognizes the validity of all those sacraments which of their nature do not require her power of jurisdiction but only valid orders. It is Catholic teaching, therefore, that in all these churches the true Body and the true Blood of Christ are received in the Holy Eucharist, not because they are schismatical churches, that is to say not because of their own special character, but because in spite of this they still preserve a part of the original Catholic heritage. It is that which is Catholic in them that still has power to sanctify and to save.
And—to pass to a third point of doctrine which illustrates the proposition we are discussing—we are not to regard these sacraments thus administered outside the Church as being objectively valid only, and not also subjectively efficacious. St. Augustine seems to have held such a view regarding the efficacy of these sacraments. He supposed, apparently, that the grace objectively provided in these non-Catholic sacraments was not subjectively effective in the heretics and schismatics who received them, because they were all in bad faith, or, more profoundly, because they were in deliberate and obstinate antagonism to the spirit of unity, and therefore to the Holy Ghost. The Jansenists in the seventeenth century followed St. Augustine and advocated the same erroneous opinion, setting it up as their principle that "outside the Church there is no grace" (extra ecclesiam nulla conceditur gratia). But again it was Rome and a pope that expressly rejected this proposition.[4]
The assertion that the Catholic Church of later centuries has developed the ideas of St. Cyprian and St. Augustine, that she has 'continually sharpened the principle of exclusiveness and so continually narrowed Catholicism"[5] is in contradiction with the plain facts of history. For the truth is that the later Church corrected the original rigorism of the ancient African theologian and maintained that God's grace worked even outside the Catholic body. Non-Catholic sacraments have the power to sanctify and save, not only objectively, but also subjectively. It is therefore conceivable also, from the Church's standpoint, that there is a true, devout and Christian life in those non-Catholic communions which believe in Jesus and baptize in His Name. We Catholics regard this Christian life, wherever it appears, with unfeigned respect and with thankful love. We regard with deep esteem our Protestant deaconesses,[6] and such noble figures at Wichern and Bodelschwingh.[7] We admire the loving manifestations of the "Home Mission."
The songs of a Paul Gerhard, the St. Matthew Passion of a Sebastian Bach and the oratorios of a Handel affect us almost as "sweet melodies from our old family home."[8] And not merely a Christian life, but a complete and lofty Christian life, a life according to the "full age of Christ," a saintly life, is possible—so Catholics believe—even in definitely non-Catholic communions. It is true that it cannot develop with that luxuriance which is possible in the Church, where is the fullness of Jesus and His Body; and it will never be anti-Catholic in its quality. Yet it will be a genuine saintly life; since, wherever grace is, the noble fruits of grace can ripen. Such saintly figures have appeared and do still appear, especially in the Russian Church, which has preserved the fullest measure of the ancient inheritance. Consider the saintly characters of a Dmitri, an Innocens, a Tykhon, a Theodosius.[9] Nor are saints and martyrs impossible, on Catholic principles, even in the Protestant churches.[10] Nay, it is Catholic teaching that the grace of Christ operates, not only in the Christian communions, but also in the non-Christian world, in Jews and in Turks and in Japanese.[11] Every Catholic catechism, when it explains the ordinary form of baptism, lays emphasis also on that extraordinary form which is called baptism of desire. By that is meant that perfect love, evoked and supported by the redeeming grace of Jesus, has power to sanctify the soul, and that that soul so decisively affirms the will of God that it would at once receive baptism, if it knew of that sacrament or could receive it. As God sends His rain and His sunshine upon all, so does He send His conquering grace into the hearts of all those who hold themselves ready for it, who do what in them lies, who perform what their conscience bids them. Since Christ appeared on earth and founded His Kingdom of God, there is no longer any purely natural morality, however much such a natural morality may be possible in itself. Wherever conscience is astir, wherever men are alive to God and His Holy Will, there and at the same time the grace of Christ co-operates and lays in the soul the seeds of the new supernatural life. Heiler himself, without observing the violent contradiction with his assertion that the later Church has narrowed Catholicism, cites that distinguished Catholic theologian, the Jesuit Cardinal Juan de Lugo, as summarizing Catholic teaching in this manner: "God gives light, sufficient for its salvation, to every soul that attains to the use of reason in this life . . . the various philosophical schools and religious bodies throughout mankind all contain and hand down, amid various degrees of human error and distortion, some truth, some gleams and elements of divine truth . . . the soul that in good faith seeks God, His truth and love, concentrates its attention, under the influence of grace, upon these elements of truth, be they many or few, which are offered to it in the sacred books and religious schools and assemblies of the Church, Sect, or Philosophy in which it has been brought up. It feeds upon these elements, the others are simply passed by; and divine grace, under cover of these elements, feeds and saves this soul."[12] It is therefore de Lugo's precise opinion—and it is the opinion of the Church's theologians in general—that all those elements or "seeds" of truth which are dispersed in the most multifarious sects, philosophical schools, and religious communions can provide a basis and starting point for the grace of Christ, so that the natural man may be elevated into the new supernatural man of faith and love. The Church rightly maintains and continually reiterates, in decisive and uncompromising fashion, her claim to be the sole true Body of Christ; but at the same time she holds a generous and large-minded view regarding the activity of Christ's grace. That activity has no bounds or limits, but is as infinite as the love of God.
If we consider the Church's claim to be the only Church wherein men may be saved in the clear and radiant light of her belief that God's grace knows no bounds or limits to its operation, we at once see the true and profound meaning of that claim. The Church understands it to mean that by virtue of the express institution of Christ she represents in the economy of salvation the ordinary proper institute of the truth and grace of Jesus on the earth. In the Catholic Church the saving power, which was revealed in Christ, flows into the world with original force, in untroubled purity, and in complete and exhaustive fullness. With original force—for while non-Catholic bodies owe such Christian truth and grace as they possess to the Catholic Church, the Church receives it through no intermediary but direct and fresh from our Lord Himself. She is in fact nothing else but His body of disciples, expanded in space and time. In untroubled purity—for she has not, like the various sects, contaminated her Christian heritage with novelties and modernisms, but has in the unbroken series of her bishops maintained it as immaculately pure as she received it from Christ. In exhaustive fullnessfor she does not choose only this or that precious jewel, but she calls her own the whole inheritance of revealed truth contained in Scripture and Tradition. Therefore the Church is the true and ordinary institute of the grace and truth of Jesus. But that does not prevent there being, alongside this ordinary institute, extraordinary ways of salvation, or hinder the grace of Christ from visiting particular men without the mediation of the Church. But because and in so far as the Body of Christ comprehends all those who are saved by Christ, those also who are visited by His grace in this immediate way belong to His Church. It is true that they do not belong to its outward and visible body, but they certainly belong to its invisible, supernatural soul, to its supernatural substance. For the grace of Christ never works in the individual in an isolated fashion, but always in the unity of His Body. This-point is repeatedly emphasized by St. Augustine: "Wouldst thou live by the Spirit of Christ, thou must be in the Body of Christ.... For only the Body of Christ can live by the Spirit of Christ" (In ev. Joann. xxvi, 13; cf. xxvii, 6). And thus it holds good, even for those brethren who are thus separated from the visible organism of the Church, that they too are saved in the Church, and not without her or in opposition to her.
But, it may be objected, how can there be true Christians who belong to the soul of the Church and yet are separated from her visible body? How can a man belong to the Body of Christ and yet not belong to the body of the Church? In supplying a brief answer to this question, we shall pass from the theological to the psychological explanation of the dogma under discussion. From the purely theological standpoint, in the light of the dogmatic idea of the intimate and necessary connection between Christ and the Church, the only possible conclusion regarding all heretics and schismatics, Jews and pagans, is that judgment of condemnation which the Council of Florence pronounced upon them. In so far as they stand, and will to stand, outside the one Church of Christ, they stand according to strict theology outside the sphere of Christ's grace and therefore outside salvation. It is thus, from this purely theological standpoint, that we are to understand the sharp anathemas pronounced by the Church against all heretics and schismatics, as also those contained in that Borromeo Encyclical of Pope Pius X which was so much impugned.[13] In these pronouncements the Church is not deciding the good or bad faith of the individual heretic. Still less is she sitting in judgment on his ultimate fate. The immediate purport of her condemnation is that these heretics represent and proclaim ideas antagonistic to the Church. When ideas are in conflict, when truth is fighting against error, and revelation against human ingenuity, then there can be no compromise and no indulgence. If our Lord had exercised such indulgence, He would not have been crucified. When He called the Pharisees whited sepulchers and a brood of vipers, and Herod a fox, He was not inspired by any sort of hatred against individuals, but by the tremendous earnestness of truth. It was His defiant and vivid conviction of responsibility for eternal truth that caused Him to use such strong words towards error and its representatives. And if we do not fight thus for the truth, then we lose all moral and spiritual power, we become characterless, we disown God. Dogmatic intolerance is therefore a moral duty, a duty to the infinite truth and to truthfulness.
But so soon as it is a question, not of the conflict between idea and idea, but of living men, of our judgment on this or that non-Catholic, then the theologian becomes a psychologist, the dogmatist a pastor of souls. He draws attention to the fact that the living man is very rarely the embodiment of an idea, that the conceptual world and mentality of the individual are so multifarious and complicated, that he cannot be reduced to a single formula. In other words the heretic, the Jew and the pagan seldom exist in a pure state. What we actually have before us is living men, with their fundamental outlook influenced or dominated by this or that erroneous idea. Therefore the Church expressly distinguishes between "formal" and "material" heretics. A "formal" heretic rejects the Church and its teaching absolutely and with full deliberation; a "material" heretic rejects the Church from lack of knowledge, being influenced by false prejudice or by an anti-Catholic upbringing. St. Augustine forbids us to blame a man for being a heretic because he was born of heretical parents, provided that he does not with obstinate self-assurance shut out all better knowledge, but seeks the truth simply and loyally.[14] Whenever the Church has such honest inquirers before her, she remembers that our Lord condemned Pharisaism but not the individual Pharisee, that He held deep and loving intercourse with Nicodemus, and allowed Himself to be invited by Simon. The spirit of the Church in her dealings with souls may be stated in St. Augustine's words: "Love men, slay error!"[15]
It is true that heretics were tried and burnt in the Middle Ages. But that was not done only in Catholic countries, for Calvin himself had Servetus burnt. And capital punishment was employed against the Anabaptists, especially in Thuringia and in the Electorate of Saxony. According to the Protestant Theologian, Walter Kohler, even Luther after 1530 regarded the penalty of death as a justifiable punishment for heresy.[16] The fact that the persecution of heresy was approved as a justifiable thing by non-Catholic bodies, and in certain cases carried out in practice, goes to show that such persecution did not spring from the nature of Catholicism, or in particular from its exclusive claims. The origin of such persecutions is to be sought rather in the Byzantine and medieval conception of the state, whereby every attack on the unity of the faith was regarded as an open crime against the unity and stability of the state, and one which had to be punished according to the primitive methods of the time.
Besides this political cause, the mentality of the period played its part. The religion of the medieval man embraced his whole life and outlook. There was as yet no unhappy cleavage between religion and morality. So that every revolt against the Catholic faith seemed to him to be a moral crime, a sort of murder of the soul and of God, an offense more heinous than parricide. And his outlook was logical rather than psychological. He rejoiced in the perception of truth, but he had little appreciation of the living conditions of soul by which this perception is reached. He lived and moved in the dialectical antithesis of Yes and No, of Either and Or, and hardly considered the fact that life does not express itself in the sharp contrast of Yes and No, Truth and Error, Belief and Unbelief, Virtue and Vice, but in an infinite wealth of transitional forms and intermediate stages; and that in dealing with the living man we have to take account not only of the logical force of truth, but also of the particular quality of the mental and spiritual endowment with which he reacts to the truth. Because they were not alive to the infinite variety of such spiritual endowment, they were all too ready, especially when truth was impugned, to conclude at once that it was a case of "evil will" (mala fides) and to pass sentence of condemnation, even though there were insuperable intellectual obstacles (ignorantia invincibilis) in the way of the perception of the truth. This pre-eminently logical attitude of mind is characteristic of the Middle Ages. That epoch had no feeling for life as a flowing thing with its own peculiar laws, no appreciation of history, whether within us or without us. And this attitude was not to be overcome and corrected, until the spirit of the time had changed, until in the course of centuries and by a long evolution a new outlook took its place. Therefore the persecutions of heretics did not proceed from the nature of Catholicism, but from the political and mental attitude of the Middle Ages.
So with the passing of the Middle Ages such persecutions gradually ceased. The new Code of Canon Law expressly forbids any employment of force in the matter of faith.[17] The great conception of a single Emperor and a single Empire has gone. And the theologian has by means of psychological and historical studies attained a wider understanding and become increasingly cautious in attributing an "evil will" to the heretic. He has become more alive to the thousand possibilities of invincible and therefore excusable error. "It must be regarded as true," declared Pope Pius IX in an allocution of the 9th December, 1854, "that he who does not know the true religion is guiltless in the sight of God so far as his ignorance is invincible. Who would presume to fix the limits of such ignorance, amid the infinite variety and difference of peoples, countries and mentalities, and amid so many other circumstances? When we are free from the limitations of the body and see God as He is, then we shall see how closely and beautifully God's mercy and justice are conjoined." Wherefore the Church's claim to be the Church of salvation by no means excludes a loving and sympathetic appreciation of the subjective conditions and circumstances under which heresy has arisen. Nor is her condemnation of a heresy always at the same time a condemnation of the individual heretic. As an instance of the generosity of the Catholic attitude, take the words of the celebrated Redemptorist, St. Clement Maria Hofbauer, regarding the origins of the Reformation: "The revolt from the Church began" he wrote "because the German people could not and cannot but be devout." Hofbauer was a convinced Catholic, who condemned all heresy as a moral and religious crime, as a violation of the unity of the Body of Christ. He was fully aware also that the causes of the Reformation were by no means exclusively religious. But that knowledge did not prevent him from appreciating those religious forces which contributed in no small degree to its success. The fact that Hofbauer has been canonized suggests that the Church did not disapprove of his utterance, but regarded it as a confirmation of her constant belief in the possibility of invincible error and perfect good faith in the heretic.
Unless we understand that, we shall not grasp the meaning of her proposition, that there is no salvation outside the Church. True there is only one Church of Christ. She alone is the Body of Christ and without her there is no salvation. Objectively and practically considered she is the ordinary way of salvation, the single and exclusive channel by which the truth and grace of Christ enter our world of space and time. But those also who know her not receive these gifts from her; yes, even those who misjudge and fight against her, provided they are in good faith, and are simply and loyally seeking the truth without self-righteous obstinacy. Though it be not the Catholic Church itself which hands them the bread of truth and grace, yet it is Catholic bread that they eat. And, while they eat of it, they are, without knowing it or willing it, incorporated in the supernatural substance of the Church. Though they be outwardly separated from the Church, they belong to its soul.
So that the non-Catholic of good will is already fundamentally united to the Church. It is only that he sees her not. Yet she is there, invisible and mysterious. And the more he grows in faith and in love, the more plainly will she become actually visible to him. Many have already seen her, and many more yet will see her. There is a special possibility of such reunion with the Catholic Church wherever Protestantism has remained faithful to Christ and believes truly in the Incarnate God. And it is because we believe that very many non-Catholics are already thus invisibly united with the Church, that we do not abandon our conviction that this invisible union will one day be made visible in all its beauty. The more consciously and completely we all of us exhibit the spirit of Christ, the more certainly will that hour of grace approach, when the veils will fall from all eyes, when we shall put away all prejudice and misunderstanding and bitterness, when we shall once again as of old extend to one another the hand of brotherhood, when there shall be one God, one Christ, one shepherd and one flock.
Endnotes
1. Op. cit., p. 614.
2. Heiler, op. cit., p. 613.
3. ibid., p. 48.
4. Pope Clement XI in the year 1713.
5. Heiler, op. cit., p. 614.
6. "Diakonissin," women living in small communities and devoting themselves to works of charity. They wear a quasi-religious dress.
7. Two remarkable social and religious workers. Friedrich Bodelschwingh (1831-1910) was a man of great force of character and originality who sought in his work for the poor and outcast to provide them not with "institutional" charity, but with a real personal and private Life on an independent, family basis.
8. Knopfler, a Catholic professor in the University of Munich.
9. cf. D'Herbigny, "Theologica de ecclesia," 1921, Vol. II, p. 110.
10. See in the Catholic monthly, "Seele" (1924, p. 7 ff.), an appreciative and sympathetic picture by L. Pfleger of the Anglican, Florence Barclay.
11. See Pere Marechal's attractive account of the Mohammedan mystic, Al Hallaj (Recherches de science rel., 1923, Vol. XV, p. 244 ff.).
12. De Lugo, "De Fide," Dispp. XIX et XX, as cited by F. von Hugel, "Essays and Addresses on the Philosophy of Religion" (first series, London, 1921, p. 252), and by Heiler (op. cit. p. 612) from him.
13. An encyclical of Pope Pius X concerning St. Charles Borromeo, issued in the year 1910, which by its unfavorable references to the leaders of the Reformation raised a storm in Protestant Germany.
14. Ep XLIII, i, 1.
15. Diligite homines, interficite errores, sine superbia de veritate praesumite, sine saevitia pro veritate certate. Orate pro eis, quos redarguitis atque convincitis (Contra litteras Petiliani, iii, Lib. I, 29).
16. "Reformation und Ketzerprozess," 1900, p. 36.
17. "Ad amplexandam fidem catholicam nemo invitus cogatur," Canon 1351.
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