Benedict XVI to the Roman Curia: December 22, 2005[1]
“The last event of this year on which I wish to reflect here is the celebration of the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council 40 years ago. This memory prompts the question: What has been the result of the Council? Was it well received? What, in the acceptance of the Council, was good and what was inadequate or mistaken? What still remains to be done?…
“The hermeneutic of discontinuity risks ending in a split between the preconciliar Church and the postconciliar Church. It asserts that the texts of the council as such do not yet express the true spirit of the council. It claims that they are the result of compromises in which, to reach unanimity, it was found necessary to keep and reconfirm many old things that are now pointless. However, the true spirit of the council [It is alleged[2]] is not to be found in these compromises but instead in the impulses toward the new that are contained in the texts. These innovations alone were supposed to represent the true spirit of the council, and starting from and in conformity with them, it would be possible to move ahead. [However, they argue,] precisely because the texts would only imperfectly reflect the true spirit of the council and its newness, it would be necessary to go courageously beyond the texts and make room for the newness in which the council’s deepest intention would be expressed, even if it were still vague. In a word, it would be necessary not to follow the texts of the council but its spirit. In this way, obviously, a vast margin was left open for the question on how this spirit should subsequently be defined and room was consequently made for every whim. The nature of the council as such is therefore basically misunderstood. In this way it is considered as a sort of constituent that eliminates an old constitution and creates a new one. However, the constituent assembly needs a mandator and then confirmation by the mandator, in other words, the people the constitution must serve. The fathers had no such mandate, and no one had ever given them one; nor could anyone have given them one because the essential constitution of the Church comes from the Lord and was given to us as so that we might attain eternal life and, starting from this perspective, be able to illuminate life in time and time itself.”
The Hermeneutic of Discontinuity: Loss of the experience of Jesus Christ as ontological Subject: God-man.
·Discontinuity in the interpretation of Vatican II: The Bologna School (Alberigo)
· Ontological discontinuity with classicist metaphysics: Aristotelian “nature” [substance as being-in-self] attracted by Prime Ousia thinking self, but seeks the cosmic ends of the nature; Greek eros is fundamentally selfish love. It seeks what is already good, and does so for its own need and pleasure.[3]
· John Courtney Murray’s take on the shift from “Classicism” to “historical consciousness.”[4]
· Interpretive discontinuity on the meaning of eros with regard to agape as presented by Anders Nygren (see below);
· Discontinuity with scholastic theology and philosophy of both Augustine (seen through the eyes of Baius and Jansenius), and St. Thomas (seen through the eyes of Cajetan and consequent new-scholasticism): the human person came to be dumbed- down to “pure nature” as a “parallel” to divine “nature” in order to preserve freedom of choice and the gratuitousness of divine grace that is not “owed” to created nature.
· Discontinuity with Enlightenment dualism where the “I” is consciousness and the body is matter as “thing.” The epistemological methodology is abstractive rationalism and applied positivism. The hegemony of sensible experience to which all thought is reducible.
“Eros is, point by point, the counterpoise to agape. It is neither creative nor spontaneous, because it is essentially determined by its object, by the pre-existing goodness and beauty whose presence is first discovered and thereupon loved. Primarily, of course, eros is `love of a desirous, egocentric kind.’ `The starting point is human need, the goal is the satisfaction of this need.’ `Eros is fundamentally self-love,’ even in its most sublime form, even when it is conceived as a `way of man toward the divine.’”[5]
* * * * * *
II
“The Hermeneutic of Continuity and Reform:” The Perduring “I” of the Church
Ratzinger: “This schematism of a before and after in the history of the Church, wholly unjustified by the documents of Vatican II, which do nothing but reaffirm the continuity of Catholicism, must be decidedly opposed. There is no `pre-‘ or `post-‘ conciliar Church: there is but one, unique Church that walks the path toward the Lord, ever deepening and ever better understanding the treasure of faith that he himself has entrusted to her. There are no leaps in this history, there are no fractures, and there is no break in continuity. In no wise did the Council intend to introduce a temporal dichotomy in the Church” (“Ratzinger Report.” [6] “I believe… that the true time of Vatican II has not yet come, that its authentic reception has not yet begun: its documents were quickly buried under a pile of superficial or frankly inexact publications. The reading of the letter of the documents will enable us to discover their true spirit. If thus rediscovered in their truth, those great texts will make it possible for us to understand just what happened and to react with a new vigor. I repeat, the Catholic who clearly and, consequently, painfully perceives the damage that has been wrought in his Church by the misinterpretations of Vatican II must find the possibility of revival in Vatican II itself”[7]
Benedict’s Answer to the “discontinuity:” “the `"hermeneutic of reform,’ of renewal in the continuity of the one subject-Church which the Lord has given to us. She is a subject which increases in time and develops, yet always remaining the same, the one subject of the journeying People of God.”
How is the Church the “I” of Christ?
Response:
The Church itself is a single “I” of Christ. It is a Communio of subjects who have all undergone the conversion from in-self to self-gift (faith) that is the Christological anthropology of priesthood. The Church is not a political community of “individuals” (like the Greek polis) but a communio of subjects (like the People of God). It is communio because it is integrated by sacramentally irreducible lay faithful and ministers who cannot be who they are without each other, and hence imaging the Trinitarian relations. He says:
“Conversion according to Paul is something much more radical than a mere revision of a few opinions or attitudes. It is a death event. In other words it is the replacement of the subject – of the `I.’ In other words it is the replacement of the subject – of the `I.’ The `I’ ceases to be independent and to be a subject existing in itself [as a substance]. It is torn from itself and inserted into a new subject. The `I’ does not perish, but must let itself diminish completely, in effect, in order to be received within a larger `I’ and, together with that larger `I,’ to be conceived anew.”[8]
Lower down, he says:
“It is essential to note that Paul does not say `You are a single mass,’ in some collectivist sense, but `You are one.’ You have become a new subject, unique in Christ, and thus, by means of the fusion of the subject, you are now within the realm of the Promise.”[9]
To dramatize the subjectivity of the Church, Benedict does the hermeneutic of 1 Cor. 12, 12:
“Paul does not say `as in an organism there are many members working in harmony, so too in the Church,’ as if he were proposing a purely sociological model of the Church, but at the very moment when he leaves behind the ancient simile, he shifts the idea to an entirely different level. He affirms, in fact, that, just as there is one body but many members, `so it is with Christ’ (1 Cor. 12, 12). The term of the comparison is not the Church, since, according to Paul the Church is in no wise a separate subject endowed with its own subsistence. The new subject is much rather `Christ’ himself and the Church is nothing but the space of this new unitary subject, which is, therefore, much more than mere social interaction.”[10]
Appendix: The Church of Jesus Christ as a single Subject, the “I” of Christ himself, made up of “I’s” in Head (ministers by the sacrament of Orders) and Body (layfaithful by the sacrament of Baptism and Confirmation) is the absolute Truth of Christ. Christ is the Absolute Truth in the singleness of His Persona. This Church that is the Whole Christ made one flesh of Bridegroom and Bride in the flesh of the Eucharist “is”[11] the Catholic Church insofar as the one and only Church of Christ was founded on Peter and the apostles.
A "Pastoral" Council = Shift to the "I"
John Paul II’s assessment of the Council on the turn to the subject of the believer (the meaning of the Council as “pastoral”):
“If we study the Conciliar Magisterium as a whole, we find that the Pastors of the Church were not so much concerned to answer questions like `What should men believe?’, `What is the real meaning of this or that truth of faith?’ and so on, but rather to answer the more complex question: `What does it mean to be a believer, a Catholic and a member of the Church?’ They endeavored to answer this question in the broad context of today’s world, as indeed the complexity of the question itself requires (emphasis mine).
“The question `What does it mean to be a believing member of the Church?’ is indeed difficult and complex, because it not only presupposes the truth of faith and pure doctrine, but also calls for that truth to be situated in the human consciousness and calls for a definition of the attitude, or rather the many attitudes, that go to make the individual a believing member of the Church. This would seem to be the main respect in which the conciliar Magisterium has a pastoral character, corresponding to the pastoral purpose for which is was called. A `purely’ doctrinal council would have concentrated on defining the precise meaning of the truths of faith, whereas a pastoral Council proclaims, recalls or clarifies truths for the primary purpose of giving Christians a life-style, a way of thinking and acting. In our efforts to put the Council into practice, this is the style we must keep before our minds.” [12]
Then, it is only within the “horizon” of the “I” are the “three circles of questions” of the modern era answered by Vatican II:
Three Circles of Questions: Answered by Vatican II's "Gift of Self (Eros-Agape)
First Circle: Belief and Modern Science
Faith: Eros-Agape (person-as-relation = to be = to be for) is the meaning of faith as self-gift to the revealing God. This self-giftedness is found in the epistemology of modern science. We have seen above that “`revelation’ is always a concept denoting an act. The word refers to the act in which God shows himself, not to the objectified result of this act. And because this is so, the receiving subject is always also a part of the concept of `revelation.’ Where there is no one to perceive `revelation,’ no re-vel-ation has occurred, because no veil has been removed. By definition, revelation requires a someone who apprehends it.”[13] This means that in spite of the usefulness of the historico-critical method, there is no understanding of the meaning of Sacred Scripture if there is no personal gift of self to reach out to read the revealing Person of Christ from within and match the duo of revelation and faith by the dynamic of self-gift for self-gift.
Science: A similar state of affairs has taken place in modern science. Ratzinger remarks: “We know today that in a physical experiment the observer himself enters into the experiment and only by doing so can arrive at a physical experience. This means that there is no such thing as pure objectivity even in physics, that even here the result of the experiment, nature’s answer, depends on the question put to it. In the answer there is always a bit of the question and a bit of the questioner himself; it reflects not only nature-in-itself, in its pure objectivity, but also gives back something of man, of our individuality, a bit of the human subject. This too, mutatis mutandis, is true of the question of God. There is no such thing as a mere observer. There is no such thing as pure objectivity. One can even say that the higher an object stands in human terms, the more it penetrates the center of individuality, and the more it engages the beholder’s individuality, then the smaller the possibility of the mere distancing involved in our objectivity. Thus, wherever an answer is presented as unemotionally objective, as a statement that finally goes beyond the prejudices of the pious and provides purely factual, scientific information, then it has to be said that the speaker has here fallen a victim to self-deception. This kind of objectivity is quite simply denied to man. He cannot ask and exist as a mere observer. He who tries to be a mere observer experiences nothing. Even the reality `God’ can only impinge on the vision of him who enters into the experiment with God – the experiment that we call faith. Only by entering does one experience; only by co-operating in the experiment does one ask at all, and only he who asks receives an answer.”[14][15]
Second Circle: Believer/Citizen Resolving Church/State
The state cannot exist without the values of truth and good. Freedom must be ordered from within, or it must controlled from without. Experience from the senses alone will not yield values as absolutes. Sensible empirical experience only yields the contingent as fact which is the basis of abstraction. The source of the absolute is found in another experience of the self as being in a state of transcendence/self gift. The first of these is Christian faith. It yields a consciousness of the dignity of the self and the freedom of self-mastery. Both are the stuff that ground the citizen and civil society.
In his address to Roman Curia, Benedict noted that “the American Revolution was offering a model of a modern state that differed from the theoretical model with radical tendencies that had emerged during the second phase of the French Revolution.” The American Revolution was the culmination of 150 years of a Christian experience of faith and work in a Protestant key. A consciousness had emerged from that faith experience that was grounding of self-evident truths and the demand to self-determination. These are personal absolutes that ground citizenship and the civic order.
The relation between Church and State had proven to be the wrong terms of the question. The relation is not between objects, but within the same subject as believer/citizen. The believer as person making the gift of self to the revealing Christ, experiences identification with Christ in his consciousness as free and responsible self-determination. This produces a change in the anthropological profile of the person such as has been seen throughout Scripture. When there is self-gift there is a change in the ontological profile of the person. And the name changes. Abram becomes Abraham; Jacob becomes Israel; Simon becomes Peter; Miriam becomes “full of grace;” Saul becomes Paul, etc. Upon denying Christ, Peter’s name reverts to Simon, son of John. The self transcendence of faith engenders the anthropological stature of the secular citizen. The continuity and reform that we have been seeing – actualizing self as ontological subject by the conversion that is faith – endows the believing Christian as prototypical citizen of a truly secular body politic.[16] Secularity (not secularism) is a Christian reality that is rooted in Christian anthropology and is the characteristic of the sacramentally (baptized), believing citizen.[17] Neither theocracy in general, nor Christendom in particular are goals of Catholic Social Doctrine. Rather, the Church aspires to holiness in the workplace that will breed a common consciousness of the truth of the person serving others. If this is lived out with the faith experience of self-gift by the few that are leaven – in the middle of secular society – the faith experience will be transmitted globally as the truth of the person through secular work and ordinary family life.
Hence, only where there is faith, and the culture of faith giving this experience, is it possible to have a global communio with “autonomous” protagonist states with the separation of Church and State as institutions. In this sense, Christian faith – Eros of the believing self – is the grounding of a true humanism, a true secularity (true autonomy of self-determination) and a true global, secular civil order.
When he was inducted into the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences of the Institute of France, Cardinal Ratzinger remarked, “institutions cannot maintain themselves and be effective without common ethical convictions. These in turn cannot come from a purely empirical reason.” The Enlightenment has taught us that sense experience does not yield an existential absolute. Ratzinger went on, “The decisions of the majority will themselves remain truly human and logical only if they presuppose the existence of a basic humanitarian sense and respect this as the true common good [the human person], the condition of all other goods. Such convictions require corresponding human attitudes and these in turn cannot be developed unless the historical foundation of a culture and the ethical, religious judgments it contains are taken into consideration. For a culture and a nation to cut itself off from the great ethical and religious forces of its history amounts to committing suicide. Cultivating the essential moral judgments, and maintaining and protecting them without imposing them by force seems to me to be a condition for the survival of freedom in the face of all the forms of nihilism and their totalitarian consequences.[18]
The Epistemology of Religious Freedom: John Courtney Murray’s “The Problem of Religious Freedom:”[19] Murray offers the two views: 1) If there is objective truth, there can be no tolerance of error. Only truth has rights; 2) To the contrary, persons have rights, above all to self-determination as to how they will make the gift of self to God. They are gravely obliged in conscience to seek the truth, but then they must follow that truth as understood.[20]
Third Circle: Believer/Tolerance Resolving Globalism
Religious Tolerance as political freedom is based on the absolute. St. Thomas grounded freedom of choice concerning particular goods on the necessity of the will to choose the absolute good in itself. The absolute that is experienced in the act of faith – again as radical self-transcendence to death (martyrdom being the ordinary denouement) – is the “I” of the believer. The Church itself is a single “I” of Christ that is present in all objective cultures without disturbing them as cultures, but purifies them, again, precisely as cultures. It is a Communio of subjects who have all undergone the conversion from in-self to self-gift (faith) that is the Christological anthropology of priesthood. The Church is not a political community of “individuals” (like the Greek polis) but a communio of subjects (like the People of God). It is communio because it is integrated by sacramentally irreducible lay faithful and ministers who cannot be who they are without each other, and hence imaging the Trinitarian relations. He says: “conversion according to Paul is something much more radical than a mere revision of a few opinions or attitudes. It is a death event. In other words it is the replacement of the subject – of the `I.’ In other words it is the replacement of the subject – of the `I.’ The `I’ ceases to be independent and to be a subject existing in itself [as a substance]. It is torn from itself and inserted into a new subject. The `I’ does not perish, but must let itself diminish completely, in effect, in order to be received within a larger `I’ and, together with that larger `I,’ to be conceived anew.”[21]
Lower down, he says: “It is essential to note that Paul does not say `You are a single mass,’ in some collectivist sense, but `You are one.’ You have become a new subject, unique in Christ, and thus, by means of the fusion of the subject, you are now within the realm of the Promise.”[22]
To dramatize the subjectivity of the Church, Benedict does the hermeneutic of 1 Cor. 12, 12: “Paul does not say `as in an organism there are many members working in harmony, so too in the Church,’ as if he were proposing a purely sociological model of the Church, but at the very moment when he leaves behind the ancient simile, he shifts the idea to an entirely different level. He affirms, in fact, that, just as there is one body but many members, `so it is with Christ’ (1 Cor. 12, 12). The term of the comparison is not the Church, since, according to Paul the Church is in no wise a separate subject endowed with its own subsistence. The new subject is much rather `Christ’ himself and the Church is nothing but the space of this new unitary subject, which is, therefore, much more than mere social interaction.”[23]
Appendix: The Church of Jesus Christ as a single Subject, the “I” of Christ himself, made up of “I’s” in Head (ministers by the sacrament of Orders) and Body (layfaithful by the sacrament of Baptism and Confirmation) is the absolute Truth of Christ. Christ is the Absolute Truth in the singleness of His Persona. This Church that is the Whole Christ made one flesh of Bridegroom and Bride in the flesh of the Eucharist “is”[24] the Catholic Church insofar as the one and only Church of Christ was founded on Peter and the apostles.
Conclusion
The “Continuity” is Ontological; The “Reform” is Becoming-a-Subject. The “Process:” Experience of the Gift-of-Self.
Eros understood as the nature of the man Jesus of Nazareth is dynamized by the Person of Jesus Christ who is Agape. There, eros is in continuity with itself as eros, but now achieves its perfection both in being, truth and freedom as Person Logos-Agape.
Benedict’s Formulation of "Personagenesis" in Christ as Eros dynamized by Agape: The reason for the encyclical: Beginning to cross the threshold into the experience of Vatican II and the mind of John Paul II.
Benedict wrote: “In philosophical and theological debate, these distinction [between eros and agape] have often been radicalized to the point of establishing a clear antithesis between them: descending, oblative love – agape – would be typically Christian, while on the other hand ascending, possessive or covetous love –eros – would be typical of non-Christian, and particularly Greek culture. Were this antithesis to be taken to extremes, the essence of Christianity would be detached from the vital relations fundamental to human existence and would become a world apart, admirable perhaps, but decisively cut off from the complex fabric of human life. Yet eros and agape – ascending love and descending love- can never be completely separated. The more the two, in their different aspects, find a proper unity in the one reality of love, the more the true nature of love in general is realized. Even if eros is at first mainly covetous and ascending, a fascination for the great promise of happiness, in drawing near to the other, it is less and less concerned with itself, increasingly seeks the happiness of the other, is concerned more and more with the beloved, bestows itself and wants 'To be there for' the other. The element of agape thus enters into this love, for otherwise eros is impoverished and even loses its own nature.”
The large point is that we are being lifted from a metaphysics of substance to a metaphysics of Person as relation (self-gift) without giving up Being. We are in perfect continuity with Christian metaphysics in crossing the threshold of subjectivity where Christ comes to us as “I Am.” In doing this, we are able to assimilate the turn to the subject of the Modern Enlightenment and purify it of subjectivism and relativism. In fact, it is precisely in recovering the identity of the ontological self in the revealing “I” of Jesus Christ that we find absolute values, the absolute good, in the existential singular – the self. Since “there is only one who is good” – God – we experience the absolute value of the good in ourselves when we transcend self as gift prototypically in the act of faith and in every subsequent act of worship of God and service to the others. This is the response to the challenge that Benedict formulated in his interview with Robert Moynihan.
[1] Origins, January 26, 2006, Vol. 35, No. 32, p. 536.
[2] Alberigo and the Bologna group.
[3] J. Pieper, “Faith, Hope, Love,” Ignatius (1997) 212.
[4] “The second great trend of the 19th century was the movement from classicism to historical consciousness… Suffice it to say that classicism designates a view of truth which holds objective truth, precisely because it is objective, to exist `already out there now” (to use Bernard Lonergan’s descriptive phrase). Therefore, it also exists apart from its possession by anyone. In addition, it exists apart from history, formulated in propositions that are verbally immutable. If there is to be talk of development of doctrine, it can only mean that the truth, remaining itself unchanged in its formulation, may find different applications in the contingent world of historical change. In contrast, historical consciousness, while holding fast to the nature of truth as objective, is concerned with the possession of truth, with man’s affirmations of truth… The Church in the 19th century, and even in the 20th, opposed this movement toward historical consciousness. Here, took, the reason was obvious. The term of the historical movement was modernism, that `conglomeration of all heresies,’ as Pascendi dominici gregis called it. The insight into the historicity of truth and the insight into the role of the subject in the possession of truth were systematically exploited to produce almost every kind of pernicious `ism,’ unto the destruction of the notion of truth itself – its objective character, its universality, its absoluteness. These systematizations were false, but the insights from which they issued were valid. Here again a work of discernment needed to be done, and was not koone. To be quite summary about it, this work had to wait until Vatican Council II.
“The sessions of the Council have made it clear that, despite resistance in certain quarters, classicism is giving way to historical consciousness;” Declaration on Religious Freedom of Vatican Council II, Paulist Press (1966), Appendix III by John Courtney Murray, S.J.
[5] This is Pieper rendering the mind of Anders Nygren (Bishop of Lund) from his work, “Eros und Agape” in “Faith, Hope, Love,” Ignatius (1997) 212.
[6] J. Ratzinger, “The Ratzinger Report,” Ignatius (1985) 35.
[7] Ibid. 40.
[8] J. Ratzinger, “The Spiritual Basis and Ecclesial Identity of Theology,” The Natuare and Mission of Theology Ignatius (1995) 51
[9] Ibid
[10] Ibid. 53-54
[11] An important clarification is made on the terminology “subsistit in” and “adest” with regard to the relation of the Church of Jesus Christ and the Catholic Church. Lumen Gentium #8 reads: “This Church [“the sole Church of Christ”], constituted and organized as a society in the present world, subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed bay the successor of Peter and by the bishops in communion with him. Nevertheless, many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside its visible confines. Since these are gifts belonging to the Church of Christ, they are forces impelling towards Catholic unity.” An important study by Karl J. Becker S.J. (Origins 1/19/06, vol. 35, no. 31, 519) affirmed, after much confusion on the point that “the phrase subsist in cannot possibly be interpreted in a way which would contradict the meaning of est.” The SCDF declared re L. Boff’s book “Chiesa: Carisma et Potere:” “(T)he council had chosen the word subsistit exactly in order to make clear that one sole `subsistence of the true church exists, whereas outside her visible structure only elementa Ecclesiae exist; these – being elements of the same church – tend and conduct toward the Catholic Church” (520).
[12] “Sources of Renewal,” op. cit. 17.
[13] J. Ratzinger, “Milestones,” Ignatius (1997) 108-109.
[14] J. Ratzinger, “Intro…” op. cit. 125 (1990 edition).
[15] Earlier (1988), Benedict said: “at the heart of the historico-critical method lies the effort to establish in the field of history a level of methodological precision which would yield conclusions of the same certainty as in the field of the natural sciences…. Now, if the natural science model is to be followed without hesitation, then the importance of the Heisenberg principle should be applied to the historical-critical method as well. Heisenberg has shown that the outcome of a given experiment is heavily influenced by the point of view of the observer. So much is this the case that both the observer’s questions and observations continue to change themselves in the natural course of events. When applied to the witness of history, this means that interpretation can never be just a simple reproduction of history’s being, `as it was.’ The word inter-pretation gives us a clue to the question itself: Every exegesis requires an `inter,’ an entering in and a being “inter’ or between things; this is the involvement of the interpreter himself. Pure objectivity is an absurd abstraction. It is not the uninvolved who comes to knowledge; rather, interest itself is a requirement for the possibility of coming to know…
“Here, then, is the question: How does one come to be interested, not so that the self drowns out the voice of the other, but in such a way that one develops a kind of inner understanding for things of the past, and ears to listen to the word they speak to us today?
“This principle which Heisenberg enunciated for experiments in the natural sciences has a very important application to the subject-object relationship. The subject is not to be neatly isolated in a world of its own apart from any interaction.” [15] J. Ratzinger, “Foundations and Approaches of Biblical Exegesis,” Origins February 11, 1988, Vol. 17: No. 35, b.
[16] The grounding insight for this took place in Leo XIII as disclosed by John Courtney Murray: “I consider that by some manner of genius he [Leo XIII] put forth the principle of solution. It is contained in the special twist, so to speak, that he have to the Gelasian doctrine. Consistently he posits as the root of the necessity of an `orderly relation’ between the two powers the fact that `utriusque imperium est in eosdem,’ the rule of both is over the same one man. If therefore there is conflict and not harmony between them, the conflict is felt in the depths of the personal conscience, which knows itself to be obligated to both of the powers which are from God Their harmony therefore is required by the unity and integrity of the human personality… In the medieval universe of discourse the root of the matter was not the unity of the human person, citizen and Christian, but rather the unity of the social body which was both Church and state, the respublica Christiana, whose unity required the subordination of regnum to sacerdotium… However, the Leonine starting point is not the Church… Its starting point is the dualism within the human person, who is both child of God, member of the Church, and also member of the human community, citizen of a state…The finality of this harmony is not social unity but a personal unity…; “Contemporary Orientations of Catholic Thought on Church and State in the Light of History,” Theological Studies, Vol X, June 1949 No. 2, 220,221.
[17] Cf. “Christifideles laici,” #15.
[18] J. Ratzinger, “Society Needs Common Moral Tenets,” Discourse to the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences of the Institute of France, November 6, 1992.
[19] John Courtney Murray, “The Problem of Religious Freedom,” Woodstock Papers, The Newman Press, Westminster, Maryland (1965)
[20] Ibid. 7-45/\.
[21] J. Ratzinger, “The Spiritual Basis and Ecclesial Identity of Theology,” The Nature and Mission of Theology Ignatius (1995) 51
[22] Ibid
[23] Ibid. 53-54
[24] An important clarification is made on the terminology “subsistit in” and “adest” with regard to the relation of the Church of Jesus Christ and the Catholic Church. Lumen Gentium #8 reads: “This Church [“the sole Church of Christ”], constituted and organized as a society in the present world, subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed bay the successor of Peter and by the bishops in communion with him. Nevertheless, many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside its visible confines. Since these are gifts belonging to the Church of Christ, they are forces impelling towards Catholic unity.” An important study by Karl J. Becker S.J. (Origins 1/19/06, vol. 35, no. 31, 519) affirmed, after much confusion on the point that “the phrase subsist in cannot possibly be interpreted in a way which would contradict the meaning of est.” The SCDF declared re L. Boff’s book “Chiesa: Carisma et Potere:” “(T)he council had chosen the word subsistit exactly in order to make clear that one sole `subsistence of the true church exists, whereas outside her visible structure only elementa Ecclesiae exist; these – being elements of the same church – tend and conduct toward the Catholic Church” (520).
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