Tradition: Ecclesia una est

(More Latin? Hopefully this is easy enough for you to translate.)

As promised, this is the first of a set of articles about the two recent documents coming from the Vatican: Summorum Pontificum, a motu proprio of Pope Benedict XVI, and Responsa ad Quaestiones from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), of which the Pope was the prefect when he was known as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. I will treat both documents separately in their own articles, but I will also speak of them together in this article. They are intrinsically connected to one another, because they reaffirm the same timeless Truth: Ecclesia una est (Catechismum Catholica Ecclesiae, 813).

The Pope's motu proprio explains that the Mass of Paul VI (the "Vatican II Mass" or the Novus Ordo Missae) and the Mass of Blessed John XXIII (the "Tridentine Mass" or the Vetus Ordo Missae) are two expressions (or forms, or usus in Latin) of the one Latin Rite of the Roman Catholic Church (cf. Summorum Pontificum, art. 1). The Mass of Paul VI is the ordinary form of the Rite, whereas the Mass of Blessed John XXIII is the extraordinary form of the Rite.

The Pope goes on to liberalize the celebration of Mass using the older Missal: no longer must the faithful (whether clergy or laity) request permission from their Bishop (cf. ibid., art. 2, 4, 5§1). If the requests of the group of lay faithful (which is "continuously present" per Fr. Zuhlsdorf's translation -- the Latin reads continenter exsistit) are not met by their pastor, their Bishop is to be notified; he may, in turn, contact Ecclesia Dei, the commission set up by Pope John Paul II in 1988 to handle affairs regarding the celebration of Mass according to the older Missal (cf. ibid., art. 7, 8). The document goes into effect on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, September 14, 2007.

The other document, which garnered a lot of negative press in the mainstream media (due to an apparent inability to read), answered five questions about Catholic doctrine: did Vatican II change the doctrine on the Church, why does Lumen Gentium say the Church of Christ "subsists in" the Catholic Church (two questions), and how does the Catholic Church use the word "Church" in reference to non-Catholic Christian communities (two questions). The document and the commentary that accompanies it respond to these five questions by quoting numerous documents from the Church, showing that nothing has changed in the teaching of the Church. The five responses have 736 words, and nearly 40% of them are explicit quotes from other documents. This isn't new teaching, folks.

So there you have it. The Church is one in its worship -- there is one Latin Rite of the Roman Catholic Church, expressed in two forms -- and it is one in its essence -- Christ established one Church, and although various elements of this Church are found in various places of Christian worship, the only place all of them are retained in perpetuity is the Catholic Church.

More articles will follow. This is a busy week for me: the Perseids meteor shower late Sunday night, my New Testament final exam on Tuesday night, the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary on Wednesday, and a Parish Pastoral Council meeting on Thursday night. Hopefully I'll get one more post up this week.

Ecumenism: True Catholic Ecumenism

How can you tell if an ecumenical Christian movement is Catholic? Read this excerpt from Communionis Notio, a Curial Letter "On Some Aspects of the Church Understood as Communion" sent by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in 1992 to Bishops around the world. Oh, and if the sentiment sounds familiar, that's because this document was quoted from in the recent CDF document Responsa ad quaestiones (and its commentary). You see, the Church has a way of teaching the same thing generation after generation...

Anyway, this excerpt, nos. 17-18 of the letter, is the entirety of section five, subtitled "Ecclesial Communion and Ecumenism". Pay close attention to what I've emphasized (with bold -- the italics are retained from the original):

17. "The Church knows that she is joined in many ways to the baptized who are honoured by the name of Christian, but who do not however profess the Catholic faith in its entirety or have not preserved unity or communion under the successor of Peter" (Lumen Gentium, 15). Among the non-Catholic Churches and Christian communities, there are indeed to be found many elements of the Church of Christ, which allow us, amid joy and hope, to acknowledge the existence of a certain communion, albeit imperfect (cf. Unitatis Redintegratio, 3a, 22; cf. Lumen Gentium 13d).

This communion exists especially with the Eastern orthodox Churches, which, though separated from the See of Peter, remain united to the Catholic Church by means of very close bonds, such as the apostolic succession and a valid Eucharist, and therefore merit the title of particular Churches (cf. Unitatis Redintegratio, 14, 15c). Indeed, "through the celebration of the Eucharist of the Lord in each of these Churches, the Church of God is built up and grows in stature" (ibid., 15a), for in every valid celebration of the Eucharist the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church becomes truly present (cf. supra, 5, 14).

Since, however, communion with the universal Church, represented by Peter's Successor, is not an external complement to the particular Church, but one of its internal constituents, the situation of those venerable Christian communities also means that their existence as particular Churches is wounded. The wound is even deeper in those ecclesial communities which have not retained the apostolic succession and a valid Eucharist. This in turn also injures the Catholic Church, called by the Lord to become for all "one flock" with "one shepherd" (John 10:16), in that it hinders the complete fulfilment of its universality in history.

18. This situation seriously calls for ecumenical commitment on the part of everyone, with a view to achieving full communion in the unity of the Church; that unity "which Christ bestowed on his Church from the beginning. This unity, we believe, subsists in the Catholic Church as something she can never lose, and we hope that it will continue to increase until the end of time" (Unitatis Redintegratio, 4c). In this ecumenical commitment, important priorities are prayer, penance, study, dialogue and collaboration, so that, through a new conversion to the Lord, all may be enabled to recognise the continuity of the Primacy of Peter in his successors, the Bishops of Rome, and to see the Petrine ministry fulfilled, in the manner intended by the Lord, as a worldwide apostolic service, which is present in all the Churches from within, and which, while preserving its substance as a divine institution, can find expression in various ways according to the different circumstances of time and place, as history has shown.

True Catholic ecumenical dialogue is not content with recognizing our differences and moving on. True Catholic ecumenical dialogue isn't just dialogue! It's action that seeks to re-unite our separated brothers and sisters in Christ with the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church of Christ: the Roman Catholic Church.