As I’ve said in numerous venues many times, the conciliar text often conveys the doctrine of the faith admirably. It does, however, contain any number of propositions that the responsible Catholic must reject given their ambiguity and their likelihood of inviting error, similar to the way in which a censor librorum is compelled to withhold a nihil obstat.
Altogether, these problem texts constitute more than a little leaven.
Let’s take a look at a noteworthy excerpt from the Decree on Ecumenism of Vatican II, article 3:
It follows that the separated Churches and Communities as such, though we believe them to be deficient in some respects, have been by no means deprived of significance and importance in the mystery of salvation. For the Spirit of Christ has not refrained from using them as means of salvation which derive their efficacy from the very fullness of grace and truth entrusted to the Church.
For clarity sake, let’s enhance what is being said by substituting nouns (in italics) for pronouns:
It follows that the separated Churches and Communities as such, though we believe them to be deficient in some respects, have been by no means deprived of significance and importance in the mystery of salvation. For the Spirit of Christ has not refrained from using the separated Churches and Communities as such as means of salvation which derive their efficacy from the very fullness of grace and truth entrusted to the Church.
To enhance the clarity of this section just a bit more, let’s substitute specific ecclesial terms (in italics) for the general references:
It follows that the schismatic Churches and heretical Communities as such, though we believe them to be deficient in some respects, have been by no means deprived of significance and importance in the mystery of salvation. For the Spirit of Christ has not refrained from using the schismatic Churches and heretical Communities as such as means of salvation which derive their efficacy from the very fullness of grace and truth entrusted to the Church.
Finally, let’s provide some real world examples (in italics) wherever possible:
It follows that the schismatic Churches and heretical Communities as such, though we believe them to be deficient in some respects, have been by no means deprived of significance and importance in the mystery of salvation. For the Spirit of Christ has not refrained from using the likes of the Greek and Russian Orthodox schismatic Churches, and the communities of the heretics such as the Southern Baptist Convention, the United Methodist Church, the Evangelical Bible Fellowship Community in Kettleton, South Dakota, as well as the Assemblies of God as such as means of salvation which derive their efficacy from the very fullness of grace and truth entrusted to the Church.
Does anyone still wonder why this text must be rejected?
There is another way to look at this passage and that is to insert the following phrase after ‘… Mystery of salvation …
” … Since the sacraments provide grace ex opere operanto, provided the recipient presents no barriers to the flow of grace (state of mortal sin, culpable adherence to schism or heresy), in this manner graces from the Church of Christ are accessible to the separated brethren … Through the means of …”
God bless!
Thanks, tradical. That graces properly belonging to the Catholic Church are accessible to the invincibly ignorant who dwell beyond her visible bounds is not the difficulty. The problem lies in the next sentence as it suggests that the Lord uses the heretical communities *as communities* as a means of salvation.
In your opinion would the following be consistent with Church doctrine:
“In as much as they (heretical / schismatic communities) are the means by which vestigial sacraments are provided to their members they have been used by Christ in the Mystery of Salvation.”
I derived this from the context provided in the previous paragraph in UR.
Thanks for your insight!
God bless!
I find that statement problematic as well, but before I comment, keep in mind that the ecumenical councils by their very nature do not deal in riddles, at least they shouldn’t; rather they are charged with providing precision and clarity.
It seems that some confusion stems from the fact that members of heretical communities can be validly baptized (which is necessary for salvation), but consider what the current Code of Canon Law states, “in a case of necessity any person with the right intention, confers baptism licitly.” (I don’t know how the 1917 Code addressed this.)
In any event, when a Methodist or Baptist, etc. is baptized by his or her “ordained minister,” for example, the reality is that everyone involved is nothing more than a layman. The validity of the baptism has nothing to do with the community itself.
The truth that is in jeopardy here and in UR is that the Lord established but one community of salvation, the Catholic Church. Any text that would invite a contrary understanding is deficient.
Thanks again for the comments.
Riddles: Understood.
Re: The truth that is in jeopardy here and in UR is that the Lord established but one community of salvation, the Catholic Church. Any text that would invite a contrary understanding is deficient. – Agreed
My questions were tending to determining if the statement in context is rendered ambiguous as opposed to irreconcilable with prior teaching.
Thanks and God Bless!
It seems to me that the portion of UR 3 that we’re discussing cannot be reconciled with prior teaching as it has been repeated numerous times. Others have attempted to make the case that there is a way to derive from this text a faithful interpretation. Those attempts are so tortured that they fail, in my view, to move this from explicit to implicit, or irreconcilable to merely ambiguous. If I am wrong, so be it. Either way, what we have here is a text that begs rejection.
The more fundamental question being implied, if I understand where you’re going, is whether or not Vatican II, given its intent (or more appropriately stated, the absence of the intent to issue any de fide definitions) could possibly have proposed in its text what must be considered a heresy, :”a denial of some truth which must be believed with divine and catholic faith.”
That’s a valid and important question that deserves its own treatment.
If this is really the way the Church believes, then I suppose my mission of leading others into the fullness of Christian faith is over. Salvation seems to be readily available to all, regardless of faith. It’s all good.
To the last, ‘real world’ version, it wouldn’t hurt to annotate even further: ‘these heretical churches, which deny the divinity of Christ, which deny the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, which deny purgatory, which deny hell, which deny the Trinity, which deny the priesthood, which deny sacramental marriage and permit divorce, which promote witchcraft (as some now do), which promote homosexuality (as most now do), which permit murder (in abortion, as almost all now do) and so forth and so on. Yeah real paths all right–to eternity in hell! And to a ruined society, to boot!
People who do not understand why the doctrine (that is, what they consider to be slight changes in wording) is a big deal just don’t understand human nature. Good teachers know it only takes one misdirect to ruin an entire learning experience in a kid–by misdirect I mean one false note or inconsistency or even interruption by the intercom. This is such a glaring misdirect in evangelization, it’s no wonder the apostolate now is limited to calling back fallen away Catholics, never to inviting new believers. I was reading through one document released by that new committee in which a sentence that started off saying what new steps should be taken just quit, never finished, didn’t even end with a period. I swear! I forgot to bookmark it, I was so shocked. Yes, you can’t go further in evangelization when you say every path leads to heaven, no matter what you deny or believe. As James above says, the takeaway is, ‘It’s all good.” Lesson over. SSPX, God bless them, keeps saying it, and many–most!–‘trad’ blogs keep forgetting it and focusing only on liturgy, and Latin, and nicer music, as if every liberal creep at that Council didn’t have all those things. Bishop Fellay, in his last year’s Candlemas speech, put it like, ‘We have to keep standing at the door out in the rain, knocking and knocking. ‘ It’s the Doctrine, Stupids! (Sorry! Obama meeting with homosexuals in Moscow has got me crying blood this morning.)
Thanks so much for this post, Doug. Dios se lo pague for the good you did with it.
By the way, to the webmaster, I found the source of my 404 error messages when trying to click on the link in the notification-of-post emails: I hadn’t enabled the graphics, of which links are one. Why it worked the second time I’d click, I don’t know, but now it works reliably as long as I enable graphics. In the past, if one made this error, the link just didn’t work, you didn’t get an error message. Maybe the program is now written to give the error mesage and to count the first click on a graphic just like clicking on the Enable Graphics button (in Outlook, not Gmail) so that the second click works. Not to burden you with boredom, hopefully, just so you know in case anyone else ever reports the ‘problem’ to you.
Sorry, I thought I was commenting on Doug’s blog–forget the webmaster note.
In trying to reconcile this text I’ve always thought of all those convert stories you hear about where certain heretical sects act as stepping stones towards the True Church. In that regard I think I can probably somehow maybe make it make sense… sort of.
Fine mess we got ourselves into…