Last updated 10th July 2024: Online ordering is currently unavailable due to technical issues. We apologise for any delays responding to customers while we resolve this. For further updates please visit our website https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/technical-incident
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Francis A. Sullivan says that the one Church of Christ continues to exist perfectly in the Catholic Church, and is present imperfectly in other churches and ecclesial communities. However, he thinks Lumen Gentium 8 also enables us to say that the many churches, non-Catholic and Catholic, are all in the one Church of Christ, since to say the one Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church means no more than “continues to exist in” the Catholic Church. In this way, he denies the identity of the one Church of Christ and the Catholic Church. We point out that magisterial documents since Vatican II have consistently refused this proposal, and have instead spoken only of the one Church being present or operative, according to degrees, in non-Catholic churches and communities. We argue that while it is true there is “ecclesial reality” outside the Catholic Church, in that there are elements of truth and sanctification outside of her, the one Church of Christ of which Vatican II expressly speaks is the Church with all the gifts of unity and instruments for salvation with which Christ endowed it. The Catholic Church is not contained in any larger divinely willed and dominically instituted ecclesial reality, and it is without qualification the one Church of Christ and the one Church of Christ is without qualification the Catholic Church.
1 Sullivan, Francis A S. J., “The Meaning of Subsistit In as Explained by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,”Theological Studies 69(2008), pp. 116–124CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See earlier his “A Response to Karl Becker, S.J., on the Meaning of Subsistit In,”Theological Studies 67(2006), pp. 395–409CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 Sullivan, “The Meaning of Subsistit In,” pp. 117–118; “Response to Karl Becker,” pp. 396–397; Karl Becker, “The Church and Vatican II's ‘Subsistit in’ Terminology,”Origins 35.32 (Jan. 19, 2006), pp. 514–522, at 519. This article first appeared in L’Osservatore Romano, Dec. 4–5, 2006.
3 Sullivan, “The Meaning of Subsistit In,” pp. 118, 121; “Response to Karl Becker,” p. 408. See Joseph Ratzinger, The Ecclesiology of the Constitution Lumen Gentium,” in Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith: The Church as Communion (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2005), pp. 123–152Google Scholar, at 147 (he also says “concrete agent”). For the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's Notification on Boff's, Leonard Church, Charism, and Power (New York: Crossroad, 1985)Google Scholar, see AAS 77(1985), pp. 756–762, at pp. 758–759: “Il Concilio aveva … schelto la parola ‘Subsistit’ proprio per chiarire che esiste una sola ‘sussistenza’ della vera Chiesa, mentre fuori della sua compagine visibile esistono solo ‘elementa Ecclesiae’ che—essendo elementi della stessa chiesa—tendono e conducono verso la Chiesa cattolica …” Sullivan, “The Meaning of Subsistit In,” pp. 117, 118, links talk of “one subsistence” to the German translation of LG 8, “hat ihre konkrete Existenzform in”—“has its concrete form of existence in.”
4 This is the claim of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith in “Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine of the Church” at question 2; see Origins 37(2007), pp. 134–136, at p. 135.
5 Sullivan, “The Meaning of Subsistit In,” p. 121; similarly: “If the church of Christ ‘has its concrete existence’ in the Catholic Church, and therefore the Catholic Church is its ‘one and only subsistence,’ it would follow that outside the Catholic Church there can be no other churches, but only ‘elements of church’ ” (p. 118); “Response to Karl Becker,” pp. 403.
6 Sullivan, “The Meaning of Subsistit In,” pp. 120, 121; “Response to Karl Becker,” p. 403. That the Church of Christ is present in non-Catholic churches and ecclesial communities is the teaching of John Paul II, Ut Unum Sint no. 11.
7 Sullivan, “The Meaning of Subsistit In,” p. 118; “Response to Karl Becker,” pp. 407–408; The Church We Believe In: One Holy, Catholic and Apostolic (New York: Paulist Press, 1988), pp. 30–31Google Scholar.
8 Sullivan, “The Meaning of Subsistit In,” pp. 119–120; “Response to Karl Becker,” pp. 407–408.
9 Sullivan, “The Meaning of Subsistit In,” p. 123.
10 Sullivan, “Response to Karl Becker, pp. 406–7.
11 Here is the statement in context: “This collegial union is apparent also in the mutual relations of the individual bishops with particular churches and with the universal Church. The Roman Pontiff, as the successor of Peter, is the perpetual and visible principle and foundation of unity of both the bishops and of the faithful. The individual bishops, however, are the visible principle and foundation of unity in their particular churches, fashioned after the model [ad imaginem] of the universal Church, in and from which churches comes into being the one and only Catholic Church. For this reason the individual bishops represent each his own church, but all of them together and with the Pope represent the entire Church in the bond of peace, love and unity.”
12 “Nevertheless, our separated brethren, whether considered as individuals or as Communities and Churches, are not blessed with that unity which Jesus Christ wished to bestow on all those who through Him were born again into one body, and with Him quickened to newness of life-that unity which the Holy Scriptures and the ancient Tradition of the Church proclaim. For it is only through Christ's Catholic Church, which is ‘the all-embracing means of salvation,’ that they can benefit fully from the means of salvation. We believe that Our Lord entrusted all the blessings of the New Covenant to the apostolic college alone, of which Peter is the head, in order to establish the one Body of Christ on earth to which all should be fully incorporated who belong in any way to the people of God. This people of God, though still in its members liable to sin, is ever growing in Christ during its pilgrimage on earth, and is guided by God's gentle wisdom, according to His hidden designs, until it shall happily arrive at the fullness of eternal glory in the heavenly Jerusalem.”
13 Sullivan recognizes just this point in The Church We Believe In, p. 52.
14 This way of speaking elides the question of membership as classically posed by such theologians as Robert Bellarmine and Francisco Suarez, for whom membership was an all or nothing question, a way of speaking embraced also by Pius XII in Mystici Corporis.
15 Sullivan, The Church We Believe In, pp. 57, 60.
16 Ut Unum Sint no. 11. It might be noted that this passage seems to assume quite naturally the identity of the Church of Christ and the Catholic Church:
To the extent that these elements are found in other Christian Communities, the one Church of Christ is effectively present in them. For this reason the Second Vatican Council speaks of a certain, though imperfect communion. The Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium[no. 14] stresses that the Catholic Church “recognizes that in many ways she is linked” with these Communities by a true union in the Holy Spirit.
17 Unitatis Redintegratio no. 3 seems to have something of this point in mind:
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.
18 Karl Becker, “The Church,” p. 517.
19 See Hellín, Francisco Gil, Lumen Gentium. Constitutio Dogmatica de Ecclesia Concilii Vaticani II Synopsis in ordinem redigens schemata cum relationibus necnon patrum orationes atque animadversiones (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1995)Google Scholar, the third schema, at nos. 7 and 15.
20 Ibid., third schema at no. 15, note D: “Elementa …. non tantum individuos respiciunt, sed etiam communitates. … Documenta pontificia passim de ‘Ecclesiis’ orientalibus separatis loquuntur.”
21 Sullivan quotes this text twice in “Response to Karl Becker” (400, 401), but does not seem to notice that saying “elements” supposes such things as he thinks can be indicated only by saying “ecclesial elements” or “churches.”
22 See Sullivan, The Church We Believe In, p. 28.
23 Henri de Lubac, The Splendor of the Church, trans. Michael Mason (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986 [French, 1953]), chapter 4. See also the second chapter of the encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia.
24 Hellín, Lumen Gentium, third schema at no. 15, note D: “in hoc praecise situm est principium motionis oecumenicae.”
25 Heim, Joseph Ratzinger, pp. 314–6.
26 Ratzinger, “Ecclesiology,” pp. 147–8.
27 Heim, Joseph Ratzinger, p. 315, note 458.
28 Ratzinger, “Ecclesiology,” p. 148, note 18. Karim Schelkens, “Lumen Gentium's ‘Subsistit In’ Revisited: The Catholic Church and Christian Unity after Vatican II,”Theological Studies 69(2008): 875–893, thinks to find yet another interpretive key in the October 2, 1963 intervention of Bishop Jan van Dodewaard. He wants it to be said that the Church, understood as the universal medium of salvation, “is found” (inveniri) in the Catholic Church. Schelkens says van Dodewaard establishes a distinction between the Church as the universal means of salvation from the Catholic Church as but the “concrete form” of this universal means. This distinction is continued, he claims, after inveniri has become adest, and adest has become subsistit in. The universal means, moreover, extends beyond the concrete form. However, the only thing van Dodewaard recognizes here as existing beyond the universale medium or totalem compaginem of the Church are elements of truth and sanctification. He rather implies the identity of the Catholic Church and the Church as the universal means of salvation. Van Dodewaard's text can be found in Hellín, 1048–1049.
29 Ratzinger, “Ecclesiology,” p. 147. Emphasis original.
30 See Christian Geyer's interview with Ratzinger, “Ratzinger on Dominus Iesus,”Inside the Vatican 9(2001): 112–118, at 114: “I was present during the Second Vatican Council when the word subsistit was chosen and I can say that I understand the expression quite well.” The interview originally appeared in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, September 22, 2000, pp. 51–52.
31 Heim, Joseph Ratzinger, p. 315.
32 Ratzinger, “Ecclesiology,” p. 148.
33 This is how Ratzinger speaks in “Ratzinger on Dominus Iesus,” p. 114: “The Council Fathers thus wished to say that the being of the Church as such is a broader entity than that of the Roman Catholic Church, but that in this last the Church's being acquires, in an incomparable way, her true and proper character as subject.”
34 This is how Ratzinger speaks in “Ecumenism at a Standstill? Explanatory Comments on Mysterium Ecclesiae,” in Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology, trans. Mary Frances McCarthy (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1987) pp. 228–237, at 230: “No translation can fully capture the sublime nuance of the Latin text [of Lumen Gentium] in which the unconditional equation of the first conciliar drafts—the full identity between the Church of Jesus Christ and the Roman Catholic Church—is clearly set forth …” Even here, he says “the equation is not mathematical” (231).
35 Sullivan, “The Meaning of Subsistit In,” pp. 123–4
36 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Commentary on the Document “Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine of the Church,”Origins 37(2007), pp. 136–139, at 137Google Scholar.
37 Sullivan comes very close to saying this in The Church We Believe In, p. 65:
“If the Church is to be found even where ecclesial communion is not as full as it ought to be, we have to admit that the church, as it exists today, does not have the unity that Christ wants it to have. However, if we have to admit that the Church is not as holy as it ought to be, can we not also admit that it is not as one as it ought to be? Indeed, is not this admission the basic reason for the ecumenical movement?”
38 Lumen Gentium no. 1.
39 Sullivan, A Church to Believe In, p. 65.
40 Ecumenical meeting, Apostolic journey to Cologne on the Occasion of XX World Youth Day, http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2005/august/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20050819_ecumenical-meeting_en.html (accessed March 20, 2008) See also the Homily for the Solemnity of Sts Peter and Paul on 29 June 2005, http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/homilies/2005/documents/hf_ben-xvi_hom_20050629_sts-peter-paul_en.html (accessed March 20, 2008).
