[Russia and the Universal Church] [Previous] [Next]
Since the existence of every human society is determined by its ideals and institutions, it follows that social progress and well-being depend primarily on the truth of the predominant ideals of the society and on the good order which prevails in its administration. The Church, as a society directly willed and founded by God, must possess these two qualities to an outstanding degree: the religious ideals which she professes must be infallibly true; and her constitution must combine the greatest stability with the greatest capacity for action in any direction desired.
The Church is, above all, a society founded on Truth. The basic truth of the Church is the union of the Divine and the human in the Word made Flesh, the recognition of the Son of Man as the Christ, the Son of the living God. Therefore, in its purely objective aspect, the Rock of the Church is Christ Himself, Truth incarnate. But if she is to be actually founded on the truth, the Church as a human society must be united to this truth in a definite manner.
Since in this world of appearances truth has no existence which is directly manifest or externally necessary, man can only establish contact with it through faith which links us to the interior substance of things and presents to our intelligence all that is not externally visible. From the subjective point of view, then, it may be asserted that it is faith which constitutes the basis or “rock” of the Church. But what faith, and on whose part? The mere fact of a subjective faith on the part of such and such a person is not sufficient. Individual faith of the strongest and most sincere kind may put us in touch not only with the invisible substance of Truth and the Sovereign Good, but also with the invisible substance of evil and falsehood, as is abundantly proved by the history of religion. If man is to be truly linked by faith to the desirable object of faith, namely, absolute truth, he must be conformed to this truth.
The truth of the God-Man, that is to say, the perfect and living union of the Absolute and the relative, of the Infinite and the finite, of the Creator and the creature — this supreme truth cannot be limited to a historic fact, but reveals through that fact a universal principle which contains all the riches of wisdom and embraces all in its unity.
Since the objective truth of faith is universal and the true subject of faith must be conformed to its object, it follows that the subject of true religion is necessarily universal. Real faith cannot belong to man as an isolated individual, but only to mankind as a complete unity; and the individual can only share in it as a living member of the universal body. But since no real and living unity has been bestowed on the human race in the physical order, it must be created in the moral order. The limits of natural egoism, of finite individuality with its exclusive self-assertion, must be burst by love which renders man conformable to God, Who is Love. But this love which is to transform the discordant fragments of the human race into a real and living unity, the Universal Church, cannot be a mere vague, subjective and ineffectual sentiment; it must be translated into a consistent and definite activity which shall give the inner sentiment its objective reality. What, then, is the actual object of this active love? Natural love, which has for its object those beings who are nearest to us, creates a real collective unity, the family; the wider natural love which has for its object all the people of one country or one tongue creates a more extensive and more complex, but equally real, collective unity, the city, state or nation.1
The love which is to create the religious unity of the human race, or the Universal Church, must surpass the bounds of nationality and have for its object the sum total of mankind. But since the active relationship between the sum total of the human race and the individual finds no basis in the latter in any natural sentiment analogous to that which animates the family or the fatherland, it is (for the individual subject) inevitably reduced to the purely moral essence of love, that is, to the free and conscious surrender of the will and the individual egoism of family or nation. Love for one’s family or for one’s country are primarily natural facts which may secondarily produce moral acts; love for the Church is essentially a moral act, the act of submitting the particular will to the universal will. But the universal will, if it is to be anything more than a fiction, must be continually realized in a definite being. The will of all humanity is not a real unity, since all men are not in direct agreement with one another; some means of harmonizing them must therefore be found, that is to say, one single will capable of unifying all the others. Each individual must be able to unite himself effectively with the whole of the human race (and thus give positive witness to his love for the Church) by linking his will to a unique will, no less real and living than his own, but at the same time a will which is universal and to which all other wills must be equally subject. But a will is inconceivable apart from one who wills and expresses his will; and inasmuch as all are not directly one, we have no choice but to unite ourselves to all in the person of one individual if we would share in the true universal faith.
Since each individual man cannot be the proper subject of universal faith any more than can the whole of mankind in its natural state of division, it follows that this faith must be manifested in a single individual, representative of the unity of all. Each individual, by taking this truly universal faith as the criterion of his own faith, makes a real act of submission to, or love for, the Church, an act which makes him conformable to the universal truth revealed to the Church. In loving all in one individual (since it is impossible to love them otherwise), each one shares in the faith of all, defined by the divinely assisted faith of a single individual; and this enduring bond, this unity so wide and yet so stable, so living and yet so unchanging, makes the Universal Church a collective moral entity, a true society far more extensive and more complex, but no less real, than nation or state. Love for the Church is manifested in a constant adherence to her will and her living thought represented by the public acts of the supreme ecclesiastical authority. This love which is originally nothing but an act of pure morality, the fulfillment of a duty on principle (obedience to the categorical imperative, according to the Kantian terminology) can and must become the source of sentiments and affections no less strong than filial love or patriotism. Those who agree with us in founding the Church upon love and yet see world-wide ecclesiastical unity only in a fossilized tradition which for eleven centuries has lost all means of actual self-expression, should bear in mind that it is impossible to love with a living and active love what is simply an archæological relic, a remote fact, such as the seven œcumenical councils, which is absolutely unknown to the masses and can only appeal to the learned. Love for the Church has no real meaning except for those who recognize perpetually in the Church a living representative and a common father of all the faithful, capable of being loved as a father is loved in his family or the head of the state in a kingdom.
It is of the nature of truth to draw into a harmonious unity the manifold elements of reality. This formal characteristic belongs to the supreme truth, the truth of the God-Man, which embraces in its absolute unity all the fullness of divine and human life. The Church, which is a collective being aspiring to perfect unity, must correspond to Christ, the one Being and Center of all beings. And inasmuch as this interior and perfect unity of all is not realized, inasmuch as the faith of each individual is not yet in itself the faith of all, inasmuch as the unity of all is not directly manifested by each, it must be brought about by means of a single individual.
The universal truth perfectly realized in the single person of Christ draws to itself the faith of all, infallibly defined by the voice of a single individual, the Pope. Outside this unity, as we have seen, the opinion of the masses may be mistaken and the faith even of the elect may remain in suspense. But it is neither false opinion nor a vacillating faith, but a definite and infallible faith, which unites mankind to the divine truth and forms the impregnable foundation of the Universal Church. This foundation is the faith of Peter living in his successors, a faith which is personal that it may be manifest to men, and which is (by divine assistance) superhuman that it may be infallible. We shall not cease to challenge those who deny the necessity of such a permanent center of unity to point to any living unity in the Universal Church apart from it, to produce apart from it a single ecclesiastical act which concerns the whole of Christendom, or to give without appealing to it a decisive and authoritative reply to a single one of the questions which divide the consciences of Christians. It is, of course, obvious that the present successors of the Apostles at Constantinople or at St. Petersburg are imitating the silence of the Apostles themselves at Cæsarea Philippi.
To summarize shortly the foregoing reflections: The Universal Church is founded on truth affirmed by faith. Truth being one, true faith must be one also. And since this unity of faith has no present and immediate existence among the whole mass of believers (for in religious matters all are not unanimous), it must reside in the lawful authority of a single head, guaranteed by divine assistance and accepted by the love and confidence of all the faithful. That is the rock on which Christ has founded His Church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.
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1. The fact of dwelling in the same country or speaking a common language is not sufficient in itself to produce the unity of the fatherland; that is impossible without patriotism, that is to say, without a specific love.
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