Theological Reflections
April 10, 2005
The Writings of a Pope
This is the first of a series in which Fr. Kelly gives a look at one of the writings of a Pope, with some commentary on the person who wrote it, and the document itself.
The first document is from Pius XII who reigned from `1939- 1958. Eugenio Pacelli was a son of Rome, born to a family who were minor dignitaries and officials at the papal Court for centuries. His father worked for the Vatican. He was brought up in the shadow of the Vatican and entered the Vatican diplomatic Service after ordination. He served as papal legate in Bavaria and later as Nuncio to Germany, where he witnessed the rise to power of Adolf Hitler. He remained an admirer of German culture all his life. This gave rise to accusations that he favored the Axis during the Second World War. After the war, the new State of Israel honored him for his work in helping many Jews escape from Nazi hands. However, ion later years, beginning in 1962, there have been many accusations against his role in the deportation and execution of Italian Jews. His critics say that he remained silent when his prestige would have saved lives. His defenders say that he remained diplomatic inn his way of doing things, believing that quiet influence and secret activity was more effective.
In Pius’ first decade as Pope, he issued some very formative documents. His approach was often very progressive. In 1943 he defended the right of Catholic scholars to use modern science to investigate the Scriptures in his letter Divinu Afflante Spiritu. In the same year, on 29th June, he issued an Encyclical Letter on the Church, called Mystici Corporis (The Mystical Body).This letter was really the first modern theological reflection by a Pope on the nature and role of the Church in the world. Pius was well aware that twentieth century theologians were very unhappy with the manner in which Catholic theology on this subject had become so focused on condemning the Protestant Reformation. For 400 years, little or no attempt had been made to re-align the Church’s expression of its teaching with the world that emerged after the Industrial Revolution, the French and American Revolutions and the Age of Science. Seminaries taught their students that the Catholic Church was the only means of salvation and that all those who had rebelled against Papal authority were in mortal sin and in danger of perfidy. The Church’s history was taught as if the Church had never done anything wrong or stupid. The Crusades were portrayed as glorious
forays against a vicious enemy. All popes were good and holy and all political decisions of popes were wise and just. Critical assessment was forbidden. Pius XII began the process of updating our view of the Church by taking us deep into the womb of the Church, to where the Church is Bride of Christ and Body of Christ. Pius was reacting to the theology of the new scholars who were re-discovering the Fathers of the Church.
One of his most interesting statements was that ‘the Church is at one and the same time spiritual and visible’. He writes that those Christians who avoid organized religion on the false pretext that Christ never intended to found a Church are in error. “Hence those who imagine the Church to be invisible, intangible, a something merely pneumatological, as they say, or who say that many Christian communities, though they differ from each other in their profession of faith, are united by some invisible bond, err on a matter of divine truth.” (MC 14) In words that echo the triumphant Boniface VIII in the fourteenth century, Pius reasserts that obedience to the Papacy is essential for salvation. "They, therefore, walk in the path of dangerous errors who believe that they can accept Christ as the head of the Church, while not adhering loyally to His Vicar on earth. They have taken away the visible bonds of unity and left the Mystical Body of the Redeemer so obscured and so maimed, that those who are seeking the haven of eternal salvation can neither see it nor find it." (MC 16) This way of stating the primacy of the Papacy and the claim that salvation is utterly dependent on membership of the Catholic Church are to be rejected by the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council.
Yet, although Pius XII was stating the older traditional opinion about the need to be a member of the Church to be saved, he did, at the same time, make a very generous statement about who constitutes the Church. He says that the Bride of Christ, His Church, is made up of “the whole human race without exception.” (MC 96) What Pius is obviously tending towards is what will become the Vatican Two definition of the Church- that all the baptized belong to the Body of Christ, even though they are not in communion with the Roman Church at this moment. “True love of the Church requires not only that we should be mutually solicitous one for the other, …. but that we should rejoice in other people, even though they have not yet joined to us in the Body of the Church….” (MC 96)
Pius also goes back into patristic theology, insisting that all the members of the Mystical Body of Christ need to pray for each other, and work for the salvation of each other. This older notion of a body of Christ where members cooperate with Christ the Head and with each other in the great work of salvation. Pius expressly speaks about the laity as the collaborators with the clergy in the spreading of the Gospel. “Indeed, let this be clearly understood, especially in our day: fathers and mothers of families, those who are godparents through Baptism, and in particular, those members of the laity who collaborate with the ecclesiastical hierarchy in spreading the Kingdom of the Divine Redeemer occupy an honorable, if often a lowly, place in the Christian community.”(MC 17)
This letter restated a very important principal of Catholic doctrine and teaching about the Church; that the members of the Church are not all worthy to be united to Christ in His Mystical Body. The Church is not a gathering of the saints who have been predestined for salvation. Instead, declared Pius, the Church is a place where sinners gather so that they may be healed. Men may lose charity and divine grace through sin; and yet they may not be deprived of all life, if they hold fast to faith and Christian hope.” (MC 23) He cites St Augustine of Hippo in his argument. “it is better to be cured within the community of the Church than to be cut off from the body of the Church as incurable members.” (Letter 157, 3, 22) The Church can have weak and falling members. The stronger members are not to despise the recurrent sinner, rather they are to pray for him and do penance for his recovery to good health in the faith.
Pius speaks plainly that there are and have been evil people in the Church, some of them in high positions within the hierarchy. These were brave words in 1943, given that criticism of the Church’s members had been almost totally muted in the battle against Protestantism. Pius knew that the terrors of the two World Wars and the increased advances of education made it impossible any longer to pretend that all evil was on the side of those who had split away from the Roman Church. Neither does Pius identify the evil people within the Church as spies and parasites trying to undermine the Church as fifth columnists. Instead, he admits that bad people find their way into all the ranks of the Church, laity, deacons, priests and bishops. These faults do not come from Christ, they are the sins of the individuals who commit them.
Those who love the Church must always identify the difference between the sinful actions of a catholic and the loving grace of Christ which pervades and enlightens the Church, His Body. “And if, at times, there appears in the Church something that indicates the weakness of our human nature, … it should not be attributed to her juridical constitution, but rather to that regrettable tendency to evil, which our Divine Founder permits even at times in the most exalted members of his Mystical Body. …Christ did not wish to exclude sinners from his Church.” (MC 66) I think that we, in these days, need to pay attention to what Pius had to say. It is all too easy to blame the ‘Church’ for all the scandals which have been so public in the past decade. But I believe that most Catholics make the correct distinction between the evil done by some priests and bishops, and the great work of preaching the love of Christ, which is the life of the Church.
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