Continuing our discussion from yesterday, it will naturally be noted that union with the Roman Pontiff is, for Protestants and Orthodox, imperfect. Just so. But the point nonetheless holds that such union is real. And the reason it is real is precisely because the Pope is not the principle of unity, but merely the sign of unity. The principle of unity is the Spirit of Christ Himself. It is He who binds together the apostolic Church with those who appear (like the exorcist in Mark) to be “outside” the Church yet who are, in a real but imperfect way, in communion with her. That’s because it is simply not possible for there to be more than one Body. This is true, not because the power-hungry Roman pontiff must have absolute control over all Christians, but because Christ cannot ultimately be divided. What Paul said in Ephesians remains just as true today:
There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all. (Ephesians 4:4-6)
So it is simply impossible for there to be, in any ultimate sense, more than one Body. And since that Body is, by Christ’s solemn word, founded on Peter the Rock, it is not possible to belong to it without, in some way, being subject to the office of the one who was given the charge to “feed my sheep” (John 21:15-19).
I say the office, mind you, not the person of the Pope. As a person, a Pope can be a perfect jerk and some have been. In the same way, the office of the Davidic monarch (also founded by God) was often filled by extremely sub-optimal men. But the office never went away nor lost its God-ordained authority.
Dante, a contemporary of the man who wrote Unam Sanctam, makes precisely this point in his famous Divine Comedy. In an age of Da Vinci Code illiteracy and ignorance of the Catholic faith, it comes as a surprise to many modern readers to discover that so far from running a police state, the medieval Church was, in fact, full of critics who had lots of tart things to say about, among other things, the Pope and other clergy of the time. Dante was chief among these critics in his day and, in particular, was chief among the critics of Pope Boniface VIII, the author of Unam Sanctam. Dante, in fact, places Boniface in his Inferno, damned forever. But note this: Dante does not damn him for the teaching of Unam Sanctam, which he takes for granted. He damns him for his moral corruption yet, like a typical Catholic, honors his office. That’s why Boniface is buried upside down in hell: as Pope he is oriented toward Heaven even when, as a sinner, he is worthy of Hell, for the way out of Dante’s Hell is not up but down, through the center of the earth, then up Mt. Purgatory, and into Paradise.
So is this partial and imperfect unity enough? Depends on what you mean by “enough”. If you mean “enough to be saved” then I submit this is Minimum Daily Adult Requirement thinking. No lover asks “What’s the absolute bare minimum amount of contact with my Beloved I can get away with?” Similarly, if, as the Church claims, the fullness of revelation subsists in the Catholic communion, then “How little contact with the fullness of revelation can I get away with?” is the exact wrong question for somebody who is serious about discipleship to Christ. Our goal, according to Scripture, is not to achieve bare minimums of love, fellowship and discipleship with Christ and His Bride, but to “attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ;… we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every joint with which it is supplied, when each part is working properly, makes bodily growth and upbuilds itself in love” (Ephesians 4:13-16). When people tell us “I’ll be there in spirit!” we know they mean “I won’t be there.” Similarly, a merely partial spiritual unity, while a good start, is a bad finish. That is why we must all continue to work toward full unity in Christ, neither denying our commonalities nor papering over our differences.
At this point, members of groups 3 and 4 (who tend to take Heaven more seriously as something that is, like, there and not simply–as members of group 2 are wont to say–a “concept” or a “beautiful myth”) are likely to ask, “So does all this boil down to saying the Church thinks Catholics are going to Heaven and non-Catholics aren’t? Or does it really mean the Church is now saying that everybody is saved?
Again, both of these are the wrong questions: which is to say they are nonsense questions. The Church makes no comments on infernal population statistics. Rather, the Church teaches that because validly baptized non-Catholics are real members of the Body of Christ, they share in the life of the Blessed Trinity and therefore share with Catholics the Hope of salvation.
That said, mark that it is Hope, not certainty, they share with Catholics. For it is important to remember that Catholics don’t even assume that even Catholics are automatically going to Heaven. The whole point, as Paul says, is that Hope means we have not yet, in this life, attained what we hope for.
For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. (Romans 8:24-25)
Catholics don’t believe in “once saved, always saved” any more than in salvation by demographics. So the mere fact that somebody says they are a Christian, whether non-Catholic or Catholic, doesn’t mean we assume they are going to Heaven. Till we die, we retain the radical freedom to reject the grace of God and end up among the damned. So Catholics leave God to judge all that.
But by the same token, Catholics also don’t assume that anybody (even a non-Christian and indeed even an atheist) is going to Hell. The Church has always believed that those who do not know Christ by name may yet respond to the promptings of His Spirit and so ultimately be saved by Him. She believes this because it was taught by Jesus Christ in the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, which describes the judgment of people who had no idea they were serving (or rejecting) Jesus as they answered (or refused) the demands of conscience with respect to “the least of these”. That is why both the saved and the damned in the parable reply with astonishment to the King, “Lord, when did we see thee hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee drink? And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee, or naked and clothe thee? And when did we see thee sick or in prison and visit thee?” (Matthew 25:37-39). Some of the saved, says our Lord, are going to be astonished at their salvation. They just thought they were doing the right thing and had no idea they were, in fact, answering the prompting of the Holy Spirit to obey the will of Christ. As Paul says, “When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or perhaps excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus” (Romans 2:14-16). In short, what matters incomparably more than calling Jesus “Lord, Lord” is obeying Him. Or as St. John of the Cross put it more sweetly, “At the evening of life, we shall be judged on our love.”
So does it just not matter if you are Catholic or not?
Far from it. Of which more tomorrow.
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