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Authority and the Ecumenical Dilemma
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2024
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The most recent pronouncement of the Holy See on the Ecumenical Movement is the Instruction of the Holy Office to Local Ordinaries of December 20, 1949. By its provisions Catholic ecumenical work, described in it as ‘reunion’ work, is safeguarded by cautionary measures and put under the direct supervision of the bishops, who are urged to give it prudent encouragement and direction, as a work which ‘should daily assume a more significant place within the Church’s pastoral care’. They are to appoint suitable priests, in each diocese, to make a special study of the movement and everything connected with it.
If any priest is contemplating the task laid upon him as a result of this directive, he cannot do better than make A History of the Ecumenical Movement the basis and starting point of his studies; a massively conceived and well planned volume of some eight hundred pages, written by fifteen experts in their respective subjects. Hardly an idea, event or person of ecumenical importance lacks at least a reference in these pages, and the full bibliography will give sufficient aid in following out a more complete study.
The volume falls into two distinct parts. The first comprises a history, from the Reformation onwards, of efforts by ecumenically minded persons to bring about the healing of schisms within Christendom. The second deals with the Ecumenical Movement proper; an organized movement expressing itself in World Conferences and culminating in the formation of the World Council of Churches at Amsterdam in 1948.
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- Copyright © 1956 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 The text of this document, in English, will be found in The Tablet, March 4, 1950. page 175.
2 A History of the Ecumenical Movement 1517–1948. Edited by Ruth Rouse and Stephen Charles Neill. (S.P.C.K.; 32s. 6d.). To it I would also add Documents on Christian Unity, two volumes, 1920–30 and 1930–48, by G. K. A. Bell. (Oxford University Press, 1948 and 1955.)
3 Included in this description, for the sake of convenience, are the various Churches of the Anglican Communion, though the Anglican system in itself resists too close an identification with World Protestantism, and many Anglicans would vigorously repudiate any such identification.
4 The case of the Church of South India, to be mentioned later, seems however to be a partial exception.
5 A.A.S., XX, page 5.Google Scholar English translation in Documents on Christian Unity 1920–30, page 197.
6 Recollections of Malines, by Walter Frere (London, 1935), page 7; and Addendum VII, page 110. The words of Mortalium Animos referred to in the previous paragraph were aimed, no doubt, at Bishop Gore's plea which may be summarized here in his own words. ‘I suppose that the principle of toleration on matters which are not de fide will be admitted on both sides of our conference table. The differences between us would only begin to appear with the question, What is de fide, or—What is the final voice of authority? What I want to do now is not to raise this question directly, but to put in a plea for the widest possible toleration of differences between Churches, both in doctrine and practice, on the basis of agreement in the necessary articles of Catholic communion’. For Bishop Gore the necessary articles of Catholic communion were the doctrines which are ‘fundamental’ according to his own premises, and he is here asking for all other doctrines to be regarded as ‘non‐fundamental’, and not obligatory as terms of communion. This plea was raised upon a misunderstanding of the use of the terms fundamental and non‐fundamental by certain Catholic theologians. According to this usage some doctrines are said to be fundamental because they were explicit in the deposit of faith from the first; others are non‐fundamental because originally implicit in fundamental doctrine, and drawn from it by the mind of the Church and so made explicit later. Both kinds of doctrine therefore are equally authoritative and to be believed, because both are revealed, but fundamental doctrines are like the foundations of a house and non‐fundamental doctrines like its superstructure; the former prior to the latter. Yet both foundations and roof are integral parts of the house, so that the removal of the roof is the virtual destruction of the whole building. It is on these grounds that Mortalium Animos denies the validity of Bishop Gore's use of the distinction. See also Bishop Beck's exposition of the same point in his letter to The Times November 12, 1949, published in the reprint of the correspondence on Catholicism Today, page 30.
7 Rouse and Neill, op. cit., page 655.
8 Faith and Order: our oneness in Christ and our disunity as Churches. Faith and Order Commission Paper No. 18. S.C.M. Press 1954, page 22.
9 Rouse and Neill, op. cit., Chapter 14, page 660.
10 Sobornost, Winter 1955–56. pages 329–30.
11 Dr Zernov has given some account of these differing views amongst the Orthodox in Rouse and Neill, op. cit., pages 672 and 673.
12 Latin text, A.A.S., XXXV, page 193. English translation, The Mystical Body of Jesus Christ (C.T.S., London, 1948), page 16, paragraph 21.
13 English translation, page 35, paragraph 55.
14 English translation, page 61, paragraph 102.
15 I have ventured at this point to make a few changes in the English translation of the Latin text in the Osservatore Romano, July 4, 1943. On comparing this translation with the more official text in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis I felt that these changes would bring out more clearly the meaning of the Latin there given.
16 The latest official comment on the teaching of the ordinary and universal magisterium, contained in Mystici Corporis, that there is no salvation outside the Church, is the Letter of the Holy Office to the Archbishop of Boston, August 8, 1949. This document is of special interest because it deals with a group of Catholics who were trying to insist upon a rigid interpretation of the dogmatic axiom, which would exclude from eternal salvation all united to the Church only by implicit desire. The letter affords further guidance to the theologian by its insistence that implicit desire, to be effective, can and must be such as to produce supernatural faith and charity, and can also obtain sacramental effects, when those divinely instituted helps to salvation are used only in desire and longing. See The Irish Ecclesiastical Record, August 1953, pages 132–135.
17 Galatians 3, 24.
18 English text in The Tablet, March 4, 1950, paragraph II, page 176.
19 The Times, November 29, 1949.
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