Tag: Scripture

Throughout its history, the Church has insisted upon its visibility.

Especially in these latter centuries as the Church — visible for so many years as some strange political entity — has changed its aspect, it has nonetheless still insisted that it is not just an immaterial, invisible society. It is, rather, quite visible. The Church is hierarchical and charismatic; it is an incarnate thing, visible and ethical, obedient to the teachings of Jesus. Echoing the Sermon on the Mount, it’s a “communion of life, charity and truth” that is “sent forth into the whole world as the light of the world and the salt of the earth” (LG 9; Mt 5:13-16). One simply can’t define the Church only in material terms or only in spiritual terms, opposing matter and spirit so absolutely. That is actually heresy.

Rather, as Lumen Gentium teaches, the Church is an “entity with visible delineation.” The risen Christ “continually sustains here on earth His holy Church,” not just as a Mystical Body, but also as a “society structured with hierarchical organs.” The “visible assembly and the spiritual community” are not to be thought of as “two realities” but as “one complex reality which coalesces from a divine and human element.” Again, the applicable analogy here is the incarnation: the idea of the divine and human present in the mysterious and visible (LG 8). Thus, the visible and material aspect of the Church cannot be completely separated from its invisible spiritual reality. That the Church is always visible simply follows from the fact of its nature as sacrament. This is basic Catholic theology, shared though also by the Orthodox and many other Christian traditions.

It’s at this point, however, we encounter some of the unique claims of Roman Catholicism. Simply put, how does this Church we’ve been describing since John 17 relate to the Roman Catholic Church? The answer is complicated. Thus, Lumen Gentium speaks here carefully: “This Church constituted and organized in the world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion with him, although many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside of its visible structure. These elements, as gifts belonging to the Church of Christ, are forces impelling toward catholic unity” (LG 8).

Now, this is a loaded paragraph! As we’ve already seen, the Church, as sacrament, is a visible organism — hierarchic, charismatic, spiritual, material — but not entirely circumscribable. That is, the Church we’ve been describing since John 17 is not exclusively identifiable with the Roman Catholic Church. The Church is bigger, more mysterious than that. But still, in a very real sense, the Roman Catholic Church is the Church. So, how do you get your head around that?

Lumen Gentium teaches that the Church “subsists in” the Catholic Church — the Church governed by the successor of Peter. Now, this little Latin verb — subsistit — is probably the most controversial word ever to come out of Vatican II. It does indeed mark a change in how the Catholic Church describes itself in relation to other Christian bodies, but it needn’t be controversial. Before the Second Vatican Council, most Catholic theologians were content simply to say that the Church is(est) the Roman Catholic Church. However, Lumen Gentium changed that, adding actually quite helpful nuance. By saying the Church “subsists in” the Roman Catholic Church, Lumen Gentium is not saying the Roman Catholic Church is the ideal Church or the real Church in the sense that other Christian communities are unreal; rather, it’s saying that the Church described in the New Testament is always fully present in the Roman Catholic Church, that by its sacraments and apostolic and Petrine structure, the oneness Jesus prayed for in John 17 is never absent from it (Unitatis Redintegratio, 4). It’s saying that the Roman Catholic Church, ecclesiologically speaking, will always be fully and substantially the Church described in the New Testament and throughout Christian history.

But what about those churches and communities not part of the Roman Catholic Church? What about non-Roman Catholics? The Second Vatican Council teaches that the Christian Church subsists in the Roman Catholic Church, the Church in communion with Peter and his successors, the popes. And yes, it also teaches that non-Roman Catholic churches and communities are different from the Roman Catholic Church, that they “are not blessed with that unity which Jesus Christ wished to bestow on all those to whom he has given new birth into one body … that unity which the Holy Scriptures and the ancient Tradition of the Church proclaim” (Unitatis Redintegratio, 3). However, non-Roman Catholic churches and communities do indeed possess “many elements of sanctification” and also many gifts belonging to the great Church of Christ, all of which are innately “forces impelling toward catholic unity” (LG 2.8). Thus, for Baptists, Methodists, Anglicans, and so on — anyone with an inkling for truth: such truth, in whatever community it flourishes, tends toward the perfect unity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit given to the Church in Christ.

But how can we get our heads around this very bold claim? The image that helps me think about this is a simple one — a broken flower pot. If I dropped a big potted plant on the floor, breaking it into several pieces, and if I looked at you and said, “Pick up the plant” — what would you do? You’d likely pick up the root stock, the big bit. It’s unlikely you’d pick up that smaller fragment off to the side or the even smaller one farther away. When I say, “Pick up the plant,” you’re going to pick up the part you know is more fully the plant. But, of course, all the pieces belong together. All the fragments matter. That’s what Lumen Gentium means when it says the Church “subsists in” the Roman Catholic Church. The one fragment off to the side may be Baptists with their great preaching; another fragment, Anglicans with their beauty and humor; another, Methodists with their hymnody. You see what I’m saying? That’s basically the idea. All the broken pieces belong together, but the fullness of the thing is what it is — the Roman Catholic Church.

That’s the unique claim of Roman Catholicism; and undoubtedly, it’s quite a claim. Speaking personally as a convert, I had to explore and wrestle with this for quite some time. I understood that Jesus meant us to be one; and I also understood (as we’ll explore later in this series) that being one meant being one eucharistically, visible one. But does that therefore mean Roman Catholicism? I mean, I had been around Roman Catholics and was not bowled over. And so, for me, it became a historical investigation, questions regarding the claims of the papacy. Is it true, for instance, that all Christians should be in communion with Peter and his successor? I did indeed come to believe this, yes. At this point, suffice it to say that I had to come to grips with this theology, and it wasn’t easy. But in the end, my accepting it stemmed from this idea of God’s mission for glory — that the Father sent his Son and that through the Son and the Spirit, the Church was created in holy, catholic, and apostolic oneness, a divine and human communion. Now indeed, this is an outstanding claim the Roman Catholic Church makes for itself. Yet, like it or lump it, believe it or not, for twenty centuries the Church has found the guts to proclaim it in season and out. Disagree, that’s fine — it’s understandable and even respectable in some instances. But, nonetheless, the outstanding claim remains; there it is. The Church we’ve been following since John 17 “subsists in” the Roman Catholic Church. It was the blunt stubbornness of this teaching that made me wrestle with it so much. Which really is all I can say to you — wrestle with it. Because this is what we Catholics really believe.

Father Joshua J. Whitfield is pastor of St. Rita Catholic Community in Dallas and author of “The Crisis of Bad Preaching” (Ave Maria Press, $17.95) and other books. Read more from the series here.

In exploring the Church — this sacrament of salvation, this communion in Christ enlivened by the Holy Spirit — many symbols and images are used as descriptors. And as a sacramental mystery, that only makes sense.

As Lumen Gentium put it, “the inner nature of the Church is now made known to us in different images taken either from tending sheep or cultivating the land, from building or even from family life and betrothals” (LG 6). The catechism even offers a small catalog of names and symbols traditionally applied to the Church — sheepfold, flock, cultivated field, building of God, temple, Jerusalem, mother, body of Christ — but there are, of course, even more than that (see CCC, Nos. 751-757). Describing a mystery not fully describable — like any real, organic thing — it makes sense sometimes to use poetry or metaphor to get at it. Try describing your child or your spouse or even yourself accurately and completely; you can’t do it. That’s because organic, mysterious things are like that; they demand a different mode of description. And the Church is no different.

Of course, the most famous image applied to the Church, an image strongly emphasized in the documents of Vatican II, is “people of God.” However, it’s an image of the Church as debated as it is famous. As the historian John O’Malley wrote, there is indeed a “strong horizontal line” implicit in the image; it’s an image reminding us of the fundamental equality of all baptized believers. Lay people are not subjects of the clergy; both clergy and lay people are one and equal in Christ (“What Happened at Vatican II,” 174). Yet, that doesn’t mean the Church is anything like a modern democracy with, as Karl Rahner warned, a ballot in everybody’s hand (“The Spirit in the Church,” 62). Such is where there has been much confusion about calling the Church the “people of God” — by politicizing the image. Which is not at all what the Second Vatican Council intended. Rather, in calling the Church the “people of God,” the Second Vatican Council was simply speaking biblically and theologically.

Drawing on the Church fathers, Lumen Gentium, early on, describes the Church as “a people brought into unity from the unity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit” (LG 4). Immediately, we learn that we’re talking about something theological — in the deepest meaning of the term, of God — rather than a social or political construct. In the Church we are indeed made holy, but not “merely as individuals” but instead “together as one people” (LG 9). The point, counter to our many modern individualisms, is that by saying the Church is a people, we’re saying first that we’re drawn together into salvation as one — in communion. As always, remember John 17, that the disciples of Jesus are to be one; calling the Church the people of God is but another aspect of that reality. The people of God is, fundamentally, simply the ecclesia, the called body, called into being by God. It is simply the people described in the Scripture. It is the people called first in Abraham and then in the patriarchs and prophets; it is the people called by Christ, called to be holy, free in truth — the disciples, their disciples, and us.

Such is the explicitly biblical character of the people of God often lost to those who mistake the image for something political, ethnic or demographic. Cardinal Ratzinger, in his writings, repeatedly made this point: that when “understood in terms of ordinary political usage” the image “becomes a slogan, its meaning is inevitably diminished; indeed, it is trivialized” (“The Ecclesiology of the Constitution on the Church, Vatican II, ‘Lumen Gentium,’” 88; “Eucharist, Communion, Solidarity,” 74). Inevitably, such misunderstanding makes the Church vulnerable to various political whims and machinations.

Remembering the Church is the people of God does not do away with or in any way denigrate its hierarchy. It puts neither the faith nor the morals of the Church to a vote. Rather, it reminds the Church to which story it belongs—not to the story of nations or political movements or trends, but to the story of God. It reminds the Church that all believers are fully part of this story, not just clergy and the consecrated. From beginning to end, the image is biblical. It is thus identical to that other image of the Church—the Body of Christ. The people of God is that particular people whose story is told in the Bible, the people gathered by the word of God in Christ, born into Christ in baptism and nourished with his Body and Blood in the Eucharist.

Such is what we mean by calling the Church Populo Dei. It is not to be confused with politics or ideologies, not without ruining one’s understanding of the Church entirely. Rather, it’s to remind the Church of its biblical origin and its nature as sacrament, that it is Christ’s body, the gathering into one people of faith in the Spirit disparate peoples into one royal priesthood (LG 9). Not a cultural or political construct, but something more akin to a miracle, the people of God belong in essence to that mission for glory Jesus prayed for the night he was betrayed. It is, therefore, more primeval, more sacred than any politics — this Catholic Church of Jesus Christ.

Father Joshua J. Whitfield is pastor of St. Rita Catholic Community in Dallas and author of “The Crisis of Bad Preaching” (Ave Maria Press, $17.95) and other books. Read more from the series here.