Apostasy HK 3

Modern Theology 00:00 Month 2019 DOI:10.1111/moth.
12522
ISSN 0266-7177 (Print)
ISSN 1468-0025 (Online)
THE APOSTASY OF THE CHURCH AND

THE CROSS OF CHRIST: HANS URS VON
BALTHASAR ON THE MYSTERY OF THE
CHURCH AS CASTA MERETRIX1
STEPHEN D. LAWSON
Abstract
The ongoing moral and theological catastrophe of persistent and pervasive clergy sexual abuse across the Catholic
Church makes theological reflection on sin in the church essential. This essay has two parts. The first, longer part
is a hermeneutical argument. I offer a contextualized interpretation of Hans Urs von Balthasar’s 1960 essay “Casta
Meretrix,” in which he traced the image of the church as a “chaste harlot” through the Christian tradition. I demonstrate
that several recent interpretations of this essay have not penetrated to its radical heart. A close reading of the text reveals
that here Balthasar affirmed that the church sins precisely as the church, and not merely as individual members. The
motivation for this affirmation was not the empirical failures of individuals, but was properly dogmatic—a necessary
implication of christology. In the second and concluding part of the essay, I contend that even though Balthasar’s use of
the feminized image of the casta meretrix does have significant problems and should not be uncritically adopted today,
the underlying theological claim regarding the church as sinner is theologically significant. He affirmed a necessary
ecclesiological truth, one that can help the church recover its visibility and better understand its essence in repentance,
which is all the more essential in light of the continuing revelations of clergy sexual abuse.
“There can be no ecclesiology that is not, at its core, Christology;
and if it is to proceed on the right lines, it must begin by renouncing itself.”
Hans Urs von Balthasar2
Stephen D. Lawson
Saint Louis University, Department of Theological Studies, Adorjan Hall 125, 3800 Lindell Blvd., Saint Louis, MO
63103-2097, USA
Email: stephen.lawson@slu.edu.
1
In addition to the helpful comments from the anonymous reviewers, I am thankful for comments or suggestions
from the following people: Alden Bass, Grant Kaplan, Jonathan King, James Lee, Ken Parker, Randy Rosenberg, and
Becky Walker. Errors that remain are my own. Unless otherwise noted all translations are my own.
2
Hans Urs von Balthasar, “The Contemporary Experience of the Church,” trans. A. V. Littledale with Alexander
Dru, in Explorations in Theology, Vol. 2: Spouse of the Word (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1991), 22.
© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

2 Stephen D. Lawson
Introduction
Pope John XXIII announced a new ecumenical council in January of 1959. In between that an-
nouncement and the opening of the council in October 1962 theologians produced a flood of
texts on the issues that would dominate the council sessions. One of the most significant of these
texts was Hans Urs von Balthasar’s essay “Casta Meretrix,” published in December of 1960.
The essay traces the history of the image of the church as a “chaste harlot” in the Christian
tradition. In 102 pages Balthasar culled an impressive amount of primary source material from
the patristic and medieval periods, effectively demonstrating that the image is undeniably a
Christian theologoumenon.
The essay has received some attention in recent years, for example in systematic works by
Ephraim Radner and William Cavanaugh. I contend that in spite of this attention the essay has
not been fully received. Balthasar’s understanding of the church as casta meretrix is complexly
layered and, at its most foundational level, is motivated by his christology. In order to elucidate
properly Balthasar’s unique contribution in this essay, I begin by surveying the theological mi-
lieu within which Balthasar wrote it. Around the time Balthasar wrote the essay, many Roman
Catholic theologians were addressing the question whether and how the church could be con-
sidered sinful. Balthasar was keenly aware of these discussions and his christological approach
differed markedly from all of them. Following this survey of how other theologians were ad-
dressing the topic of ecclesial sin in the years before the council, I offer a close reading of the
essay itself, making explicitly clear the different levels in which the image of casta meretrix
functioned for Balthasar. I conclude by considering the truth of Balthasar’s claim in light of the
recent and continuing revelations of clergy sexual abuse. I contend that Balthasar’s position that
the church does indeed sin is a necessary ecclesiological truth, one which can help the church
recover its visibility and better understand its essence in repentance.
The Theological Milieu of “Casta Meretrix”

In a speech given during the Second Vatican Council, Stephen Laszlo, Bishop of Eisenstadt,
Austria, controversially called upon those gathered to confess and respond to the presence of
“Sin in the Holy Church of God.” He drew attention to the disparity between the church’s actual
existence in the world, visible even to those outside of its fellowship, and the church as de-
scribed by theologians. “Theology seems to describe the Church of saints,” he said, “but life
itself seems to show us a Church of sinners.”3 He challenged the council fathers to reject sim-
plistic triumphalist ecclesiologies (which he critiqued as being Novatian and Donatist) and ar-
ticulate an “ecclesiology of the cross,” one that aligns with the church’s tradition and with the
liturgical practice of communal confession.4 He concluded his speech with a plea for the council
documents to speak explicitly about the sin, and not only the glory, of the present “pilgrim
3
Stephen Laszlo, “Sin in the Holy Church of God,” Council Speeches of Vatican II, eds. Hans Küng, Yves Congar,
O. P., Daniel O’Halon, S.J. (Glen Rock, NJ: Paulist Press, 1964), 45. Emphasis original.
4
Perhaps he had in mind the kind of ecclesiology seen in Pope Pius XII’s 1943 encyclical, Mystici Corporis
Christi, which reads, “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 inclination to evil found in
each individual . . . it cannot be laid to her charge if some members fall, weak or wounded. In their name she prays to
God daily: ‘Forgive us our trespasses;’ and with the brave heart of a mother she applies herself at once to the work of
nursing them back to spiritual health.” Pope Pius XII, Mystici Corporis Christi (June 1943), 66. It is clear in this pas-
sage that, while there is visible sin in the church, it is only the sin of individual members. When the church prays
“forgive us our trespasses” she prays not for herself, but only for her errant children. Acts of communal repentance
and confession do not imply any guilt or sin in the spotless Mother Church.

The Apostasy of the Church and the Cross of Christ 3
church” as it awaits a closer eschatological union with Christ, “who is the Lord of the Church
and who alone is holy.”5
Laszlo stands on one side of an important conversation in the Roman Catholic Church in the
decades leading up to Vatican II, a conversation which continued well after the council regard-
ing how best to interpret the council documents. This is a complex discourse, and it is outside
of the scope of this essay to analyze it in any complete way.6 However, in order to demonstrate
the uniqueness of Balthasar’s position regarding the sinfulness of the church it is beneficial to
paint in broad strokes the ways in which other Roman Catholic theologians were speaking about
the sinfulness of the church around the time he wrote “Casta Meretrix.” I contend that Balthasar’s
uniqueness was not that he gave a different answer to the question of the sinfulness of the
church than other theologians of the time, but that his answer is derived from dogmatic chris-
tology and not the church’s empirical failures. That is to say, Balthasar answered the question of
the sinfulness of the church only on his way to answering a different question, namely, how far
did Christ descend on the cross?
The most influential theologian during the pre-conciliar period to express hesitancy to speak
of the church as sinful was Charles Journet (1891–1975). A productive and rigorous theologian,
Journet did much to develop neoscholastic theology outside of the entrenched theology of man-
ual Thomism. To this end, in 1926 he founded, along with his lifelong friend Jacques Maritain,
the theological journal Nova et Vetera, which he edited until his death. For his contributions to
theology he was made a cardinal by Pope Paul VI in 1965. Journet’s most lasting contribution
to theology was his massive three-volume ecclesiology, L’Église du Verbe Incarné: Essai de
théologie spéculative, which he described, borrowing terms from an Aristotelian understand-
ing of causality, as “a comprehensive work in which I hope to explain the Church, from the
standpoint of speculative theology, in terms of the four causes from which she results—
efficient, material, formal and final.”7
One of Journet’s most central insights in the work was to argue that the Holy Spirit consti-
tuted the formal cause of the church, which was a significant change from the neoscholastic
manuals.8 Though Journet contended that the hierarchical structure of the church was necessary
to bring about its essence, which is charity, it is not in itself that essence, but only its necessary
condition. This careful distinction resulted in an understanding of the church in which the
5
Laszlo, “Sin in the Holy Church,” 47.
6
For an overview of this topic see Bernard E. Yetzer, “Holiness and Sin in the Church: An Examination of Lumen
Gentium and Unitatis Redintegratio of the Second Vatican Council,” (STD diss. Catholic University of America,
1988). Two other accounts are also useful: Francis A. Sullivan, “Do the Sins of Its Members Affect the Holiness of the
Church?” in In God’s Hands: Essays on the Church & Ecumenism in Honor of Michael A. Fahey, S.J., edited by
Michael S. Attridge and Jaroslav Z. Skira (Leuven: Peeters, 2006), 247–68 and Jeremy M. Bergen, Ecclesial
Repentance: The Churches Confront Their Sinful Pasts (London: T & T Clark, 2011), esp. 209–26.
7
Charles Journet, L’Église du Verbe Incarné: Essai de Théologie speculative, 3 vol. (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer,
1941, 1951, 1969). This work was republished in the late 1990s, with additions from Journet’s other writings on the
church as part of the large Oeuvres Complètes de Charles Journet project undertaken by Pierre Mamie and Georges
Corrier. See Charles Journet, L’Église du Verbe Incarné: Essai de Théologie speculative, 4 vols. (Saint-Maurice,
Switzerland: Éditions Saint-Augustin, 1998). Only the first volume has been translated into English, The Church of
the Word Incarnate: An Essay in Speculative Theology, vol.1: The Apostolic Hierarchy, trans. A. H. C. Downes (New
York: Sheed and Ward, 1955), xxv n. 13. The main substance of this work was distilled in a single volume in 1958
published as Charles Journet, Théologie de L’Église (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1958); ET: Cardinal Charles Journet,
Theology of the Church, trans. Victor Szczurek (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2004).
8
The neoscholastic dogmatic manuals of the early twentieth century contended that the hierarchy constituted the
formal cause of the church. It is not an exaggeration to say that Journet’s change was revolutionary and it certainly
renders suspect any dismissive labeling of Journet’s work as bound to the neoscholasticism of the dogmatic manuals.
He was an innovator within the neoscholastic school. See Dennis Doyle, “Journet, Congar, and the Roots of
Communion Ecclesiology,” Theological Studies 58 (1997): 463–70.

4 Stephen D. Lawson
church is church precisely because of its acts of charity. Thus, for Journet, the church spoken of
in Eph. 5:27, “without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind,” was, without any qualification,
the church now present on earth.9 While members of the church certainly can and do sin, ac-
cording to Journet, they cannot sin as members of the church. Rather, to the extent that they sin,
members of the church are not acting as members of the church, but independently in their own
human capacity. In a phrase that became well-known, Journet wrote that the church’s “border
cuts across our hearts to separate the light from the darkness.”10
In the introduction to his great work, Journet did admit that, considered empirically, not only
sinners but also their sins are included in the church. However, he set aside this way of consid-
ering the church, contending that it is not relevant for defining the church theologically; theo-
logically considered, sin is always external to the church.11 Journet asserted that the sins of the
members in no way affect the holiness of the church. The only activity of members of the church
that is properly a part of the church is activity caused by charity and directed toward God; all
other activity is counted as belonging to sinful individual members of the church. For Journet,
whatever is sinful in any member of the church, even a priest or bishop, is outside of the church,
while whatever is good and caused by charity belongs properly to the church. Journet summa-
rized his own opinion on the question of sin in relation to the church in what became almost a
dictum in mid-century Roman Catholic theology: “the church is without sin, but not without
sinners.”12
Thomas P. O’Meara rightly asserts that Yves Congar, O.P. (1904–1995) is “generally regarded
as the greatest ecclesiologist of the twentieth century.”13 This esteem is not only due to Congar’s
significant systematic contributions to ecclesiology, but also to his annual “Bulletins of
Ecclesiology” in which he commented upon major developments within and contributions to
ecclesiology from 1932 until 1962.14 Congar, one of the key ressourcement theologians, was
deeply concerned with the relationship between the church and sin. He represents something of
a mediating view between seeing the church itself as always untouched by sin and the concern
of other theologians associated with la nouvelle théologie who were, in varying degrees, more
willing to allow sin to affect the church itself. Congar shared Journet’s desire to articulate an
ecclesiology that safeguards the church’s holiness; indeed he saw Journet as largely accurate
from a strictly formal point of view. However, Congar believed Journet’s ecclesiology was too
ahistorical and did not adequately account for the actual manifestation of the church in her
members. In his review of the second volume of Journet’s L’Église du Verbe Incarné Congar
9
Journet confessed that this reading of the church of Ephesians 5 is out of step with Augustine and many other
early Christian interpreters, who maintained that it is only the eschatological church which is without spot or blemish.
Journet, L’Église du Verbe Incarné, vol. 2 (1998), 1804–27 (the second volume is published in two parts with continu-
ous page numbering). All scriptural quotations are taken from the NRSV. Cf. Yetzer, “Holiness and Sin,” 13–17.
10
Journet, L’Église du Verbe Incarné, vol. 2 (1998), 1786.
11
Journet, The Church of the Word Incarnate, xxvii–xxix.
12
Charles Journet, “Regard rétrospectif. À propos du dernier livre du R.P. Congar sur l’Église” Nova et Vetera 38,
no. 4 (1963): 302. Henri de Lubac largely followed Journet on this issue. De Lubac wrote (and cited Journet as his in-
spiration), “Notwithstanding those phrases which are intended to emphasize the contradictions between the profes-
sion of Christianity and a state of sin, [the early Christians] were well aware that at one and the same time the Church
is without sin in herself and never without sin in her members.” Henri de Lubac, The Splendor of the Church, trans.
Michael Mason (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1956), 80. For more on the relationship between Journet and the
Ressourcement theologians on ecclesiology, see John Saward, “L’Église a ravi son cœur: Charles Journet and the
Theologians of Ressourcement on the Personality of the Church” in Ressourcement: A Movement for Renewal in
Twentieth-Century Catholic Theology, eds. Gabriel Flynn and Paul D. Murray (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2012), 125–37.
13
Cited in Sullivan, “The Sins of Its Members,” 253.
14
Reprinted in Yves Congar, Sainte Église: Études et approches ecclésiologiques (Paris: Les éditions du Cerf,
1963), 449–696.

wrote: “We have seen that one of the most repeated affirmations of Monsignor Journet is that
the Church is without sin, but not without sinners. We accept this statement. It is true if we stick
to a formal consideration of the Church. But the Church is a concrete whole and, if we take it as
such, we can talk about it differently. . . . In general, Journet barely considers the Church as a
reality made up of people.”15 Congar’s concern was to allow the human manifestation of the
church to actually be the church in a real sense. He accused Journet of dividing people vertically
in two, such that one side of them belongs to the church proper and one side always lies outside
of it.16
Congar’s alternative to Journet was to understand the church as always existing with two
aspects that direct the ways in which the sinfulness of the church can be understood. Those two
aspects are, ex hominibus, the aspect of the church that is a human community, and de Trinitate,
the aspect of the church that is institution and mystery, wholly established by God. For Congar,
these two aspects were always present in the singular church on earth. They could not be strictly
divided, but they are distinct. The establishment of the church by God through the sacraments
and magisterium constitutes the church’s objective holiness (this is the formal principle which
Congar shared with Journet). These Congar understood to be the holy things, sancta, which God
has gifted to the church; they are sinless by nature. Yet he believed that these sancta are always
manifested (and therefore inseparable though distinct) in the sancti, the subjective holiness of
the people who constitute the church’s congregatio fidelium.17
For Congar, to the extent that the church is from God and directed to God by God’s presence
within it through the Holy Spirit, the church is holy and sinless, but to the extent that the church
is constituted by humans it is weak and sinful. He affirmed that the principle of the church is
holy and sinless, established by God; the church is holy. But he believed that the church, insofar
as it is manifested in individuals, which it necessarily always is, is subject to human frailty and
sin. Yetzer summarizes Congar’s position: “The Church which is not without sin in the sense
that it includes sin is yet without sin in the sense that it does not and cannot actively sin or be the
subject of the guilt of its individual members.”18 It follows that for Congar the sin of the mem-
bers of the church does affect the way in which the church can be presently spoken of as holy
and blameless, but they do not actually affect the ultimate status of the church with respect to
sin. Thus, in contrast to Journet, Congar understood the church of Eph. 5:27, “without a spot or
wrinkle or anything of the kind,” as connected with the church’s mission in the world to be
continued until the eschaton: to strive to become what by God’s grace it already is.
Congar’s position was not contradictory, but nuanced. He believed that the church visible in
the people who participate in its worship and hierarchy are the church in a proper sense (but not
the only proper sense). Therefore, the sinfulness of these people means that the church is full
of sin. However, he held that there is a pure heart of the church which has been established by
God; this heart is that which causes and constitutes the church in a formal sense (with Journet).
Congar wrote:
We can see how, if we take the church in its concrete but appropriate sense, this church is
both holy and full of sinfulness, both indefectible and fallible, both perfect and still subject
15
Congar, Sainte Église, 667. Cf. Sullivan, “The Sins of Its Members,” 253–57.
16
Yves Congar, L’Église Une, Sainte, Catholique et Apostolique (Paris: Les editions du Cerf, 1970), 136–37.
17
“While it is clear that the gifts of God and the sancta are pure, being the source of sanctification for the rest, the
sancti are mixed up with impurity, needing always to be redeemed and sanctified.” Yves Congar, True and False
Reform in the Church, trans. Paul Philibert (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2011), 91. Cf. Yetzer, “Holiness and
Sin,” 33–35.
18
Yetzer, “Holiness and Sin,” 42.

6 Stephen D. Lawson
to many historical imperfections. In the church, what comes from Christ is holy and with-
out defect, but what comes from the exercise of human freedom is subject to mistakes.
However both the one and the other truly pertain to this concrete body which, if we take it
for what it really is, is the church.
In this concrete body there is a divine part and a human part. The divine part is truly inte-
rior to the church and constitutes the array of its formal principles. But the human part,
with its inherent weakness, is also a reality inside the church. So the church in its internal
principles is without either weakness or sin, but the human matter that enters into its con-
crete structure is fallible, and that brings sin into the church—without, however, dishonor-
ing the church itself. St. Ambrose spoke this way: “Immaculata ex maculatis—the
Immaculate is made up of the sinful.”19
It is clear that Congar desired to account theologically for the sin of the members of the church
without sacrificing the church’s essential holiness. Thus he affirmed that the church as members is
full of sin, but the church as the church never sins.
Journet and Congar represent two different kinds of negative answers to the question whether
the church can be considered sinful. Karl Rahner (1904–1984) represents a different answer to
this question altogether. In a 1947 essay entitled “The Church of Sinners,” Rahner strongly
voiced his position that the church must be considered sinful not only in her members, but also
in herself.20 He began the essay pointing to the obvious situation that brought about the inquiry:
the visible experience of sin in the church. For the individual, Rahner noted, “the experience of
the unholy Church nearly always plays a significant role in his inner struggle to come to terms
with faith.”21 Yet the topic of sin in the church was important from a second, deeper point of
view for Rahner. The question of how Christians deal with the unholiness of the church is not
only a practical question about the visible failures of the church in history; it is also a question
that arises from the Revelation of God in Christ. “What does Revelation itself have to say about
the unholiness of the church?” Rahner asked.22 When approached in this way, Rahner argued,
it is clear that the church’s unholiness has always been presupposed in the faith. Thus, for
Rahner it was not only the observation of the church’s failures that prompted his inquiry, but the
church’s own faith itself. Rahner went so far as to announce that people who esteem the church
as completely holy in the present should be denounced as heretics.
Rahner brought attention to two aspects of the sinfulness of the church, which he called an
“article of faith.” The first aspect, “sinners in the church,” draws attention to those agents who
exist within the church, but who clearly belong to this world. There is significant scriptural and
traditional support for the idea of the “chaff” of sinners existing always within the visible
church. Rahner was quite uncontroversial here, merely affirming the classic Augustinian dis-
tinction between the visible and invisible church: “It is true that the sinner still belongs to the
visible appearance of the Church, but his visible membership of the Church has ceased to be the
efficacious sign of his invisible membership of the Church as a holy, living community.”23
Rahner extended his point in the second aspect, affirming that “the Church is sinful.” He wrote,
19
Congar, True and False Reform, 112.
20
Karl Rahner, “The Church of Sinners,” in Theological Investigations VI: Concerning Vatican Council II, trans.
Karl-H. and Boniface Kruger (Baltimore, MD: Helicon, 1969), 253–69. The article was first published in Stimmen der
Zeit 72 (1947): 163–77.
21
Ibid., 254.
22
Ibid., 256.
23
Ibid., 259.

“If we were merely to say, ‘Certainly there are sinners in the Church, but this fact has nothing
to do with the real Church,’ we should be assuming an idealistic concept of the Church.”24
Rahner proceeded to speak of the sinful church in such a way that it is the sins of her mem-
bers and, even her hierarchy, which make the church sinful. He argued that dogmatic concerns
force us to affirm that the sins of the church’s members render the church itself sinful, for these
people are actual members of the church and it is a theological error always to relocate the line
marking the church such that sinners are excluded. The church is not considered sinful in order
that God’s grace might be shown to the world to be abundant, Rahner argued. Rather, “sin re-
mains in her a reality which contradicts her nature.”25 In attempting to take seriously the chal-
lenge posed by the church’s sinful members, Rahner argued that we must speak of the sinful
church: the church as church is sinful for Rahner. However, for Rahner the church is not an
agent that is capable of sinning in its own agency; rather the sin of the members of the church
renders the church sinful. This is a significant difference. Rahner wrote, “The holiness made
tangible in her history is an expression of what she is and will remain until the end of time: the
presence in the world of God and his grace. . . . On the other hand, the sin in the appearance of
the Church is indeed really in the Church herself in so far as she is essentially ‘body’ and a
historical structure and in so far as in this dimension there can be sin.”26 Thus, for Rahner, the
church cannot actively sin, but the church as church is subject to the guilt of the sins of her
members, but never to such a degree that her foundation upon God’s grace is totally obscured.
By the time Pope John XXIII announced his intention for a new ecumenical council, the topic
of sin in the church had become a significant issue among Roman Catholic theologians, both
neoscholastic and ressourcement. Journet and Rahner represent the spectrum of answers being
proffered, and Congar represents somewhat of a middle position between the two. Congar,
while still landing in a final position similar to Journet, recognized with Rahner that the visible
sinfulness of the members of the church needs to be accounted for theologically. What all these
treatments share in common is that they try to clarify how it is the church can be spoken of
as, and indeed truly be, holy in spite of the apparent sinfulness of her members and hierarchy.
Regardless of the answer to the question, the terms of the question are largely agreed upon.
In “Casta Meretrix” Balthasar approached this issue from a significantly different starting
point—dogmatic christology—with dramatically different results.
“Casta Meretrix”: Overview and Interpretation

In December of 1960 Hans Urs von Balthasar published27 an extended essay which explores the
theme of the church as “chaste harlot.”28 In the essay he sought to bring forth examples of this
image of the church in the Christian tradition, both biblical and post-biblical, and to make
24
Ibid., 259–60.
25
Ibid., 263–4.
26
Ibid., 263. Emphasis original.
27
Jacques Servais writes that “It is surely not without significance that Hans Urs von Balthasar chose to republish
‘Casta Meretrix,’ his now classic study of the holiness and sinfulness of the Church, on the very eve of the Council in
1961.” Jacques Servais, “The Confession of the Casta Meretrix,” Communio 40 (2013): 642. This is inaccurate. The
first publication of “Casta Meretrix” was as a newly written essay in volume two of Skizzen zur Theologie in 1961.
Balthasar later republished it in a collection of essays in 1965 entitled Wer ist die Kirche? View Skizzen (Freiburg:
Herder, 1965). Cf. Hans Urs von Balthasar: Bibliographie 1925–2005 (Freiburg: Johannes Verlag, 2005), 14, 20.
28
Hans Urs Von Balthasar, “Casta Meretrix,” in Skizzen zur Theologie, Bd. 2: Sponsa Verbi (Einsiedeln: Johannes
Verlag, 1961), 203–305. ET: Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Casta Meretrix,” trans. John Saward, in Explorations in
Theology Volume II: Spouse of the Word (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1991), 193–288. Due to inaccuracies in
Saward’s translation, all citations from the essay are my own translation from the German text. All parenthetical cita-
tions refer to the German text.

8 Stephen D. Lawson
apparent the ways the image functions within the tradition. He began provocatively, by asking
if Luther’s denunciation of the Roman Catholic Church as the “whore of Babylon” should be
considered a proper part of Christian discourse. To answer his question he “compiled some (by
no means all!) material from the theological tradition that proves how vital the great theologians
felt that the relevancy of this thought remained in the new covenant” (208). He wrote that his
task in the essay was purely historical, simply compiling and organizing the relevant historical
data, leaving it for the theologians to draw conclusions from these data. Following his survey of
the importance of the image of the harlotry of the people of God in the Scripture, Balthasar
organized diverse patristic and medieval sources into different scriptural motifs.
Balthasar suggested that Luther was actually drawing upon a long-standing historical tradi-
tion of referring to the church as a harlot. Wycliffe and Hus said similar things before Luther,
Balthasar observed, “and their language was not simply an innovation, but rather the violent
simplification and coarsening of an ancient theologoumenon, its origin in the Old Testament
judgments of God, the betrayed husband, against the arch-harlot Jerusalem, and in the ap-
plication of these foundational Old Testament texts which lies in the New Testament” (203).
Balthasar then turned to two Catholic thinkers in the medieval period who also used such
strikingly harsh rhetoric (i.e. not only calling the church a harlot, but equating the church with
the greatest of all harlots, the “whore of Babylon”), perhaps to demonstrate that figures less
controversial for Catholics than Luther also applied similar rhetoric for the church; these fig-
ures were Dante Alighieri and William of Auvergne. Having demonstrated that this is indeed
a study worth pursuing, Balthasar began his survey of the history of the ways and reasons for
speaking of the church’s harlotry. Balthasar wrote that the work of the essay (whose aim it is to
demonstrate how present and vivid the theme is in the theological tradition),
is a purely historical work, which strives, without prejudgment, to present the most im-
portant themes through critical inspection and temperate language, in order to leave it
to the theologians to draw the conclusions from this. On the one hand these would have
to be prudent, but on the other hand they should not be so anxious that the whole thing
is emptied and rendered harmless by a mere distinction maneuver. Without endangering
the spotlessness of the church, her holiness and infallibility, one must also look the other
reality in the eye and not simply disregard it. Much would have already been gained, if
Christians learned always to see again, at what price the holiness of the church has been
purchased (208, emphasis added).
That final sentence demonstrates Balthasar’s systematic concern in this essay. It is not only the
church’s visible unfaithfulness that drove Balthasar’s exploration into the church’s sinfulness, but
the desire to understand the depths of Christ’s sacrifice upon the cross.
Balthasar followed this with an overview of the roots of this image in the Old Testament
and its development in the New Testament. After this, he delineated different scriptural “mo-
tifs” (Motive) of the image (Rahab, Hosea, Eve, Jerusalem, Babylon, Tamar, and the Shulamite
woman) in the church fathers that are appropriated to illustrate different aspects of the idea.
Most of these sections consist of extended quotations from patristic and medieval theologians,
often coming from commentaries or sermons written on the relevant passages of Scripture,
with Balthasar’s own commentary interspersed. The quotations take up a significant portion
of the essay; indeed, at one point Balthasar included ten pages of block quotations from Origen
without any interspersed commentary of his own (260–271). Yet, in spite of what one might
think from his inclusion of so many quoted passages and his stated “purely historical” purpose,
Balthasar clearly had his own agenda in the essay. That is to say, Balthasar’s understanding of
what constitutes the central aspects of the theme of casta meretrix directed the ways that he pre-
sented the data such that a reader can clearly discern the perspective, and indeed judgment, of
the author. I suspect Balthasar approached this issue under the guise of a historical investigation
in order to articulate an understandably controversial opinion in a somewhat sanitized, clinical
way. A historical survey of what the church fathers said is clearly a less contentious mode of
theological writing than explicitly speculative theological work.
It is clear that Balthasar’s aim was not purely historical, devoid of any and all creative theo-
logical motivations. This is often most apparent in the first and last paragraphs of a section in
which he judged whether the tradition had been faithful to what he considered to be the heart
of the doctrine. For example, Balthasar cautioned against the way that Gerhoh of Reichersberg
interpreted the story of David and Bathsheba because his allegorizing of Bathsheba “threat-
ens to lead away from the seriousness of the image” (250). Similarly, when Balthasar turned
his attention to what he called the Hosea motif, he wrote, “only here does the theme reach
its incomprehensible depth” (240). Balthasar can only write in such a way if he had a clear
u nderstanding of what the heart of the image is, which he demonstrated at certain key
moments of the essay.
Balthasar concluded the essay by quoting several pages from Emile Mersch’s Theology of the
Mystical Body.
Mankind is sinful. It bears the burden of its former crimes, and adds to it by its present
crimes. . . . Such is the humanity that makes up the Church. We are dealing here with a
delicate subject that is a source of dismay and scandal. We can readily understand that the
Church should have its martyrs and that the innocent may be persecuted or succumb to
illness. But that Christ’s spouse, whom He has taken to make her holy and spotless, without
defilement or blemish of any sort, that Christ’s body, which God has chosen from eternity
to adorn with the grace of adoption in purity and sanctity, should be a body of sin, that it
should be demeaned by pettiness and malice, and that its moral miseries should figure so
largely even in its most characteristic activity, seems impossible to concede. But it is so.
The holy mystical body is a body in which redemption is accomplished and yet not accom-
plished; in which sin is ever present and active; in which each generation as it rises imparts
renewed vigor to sin; in which, finally, sin has its necessary place: a place from which it
has to be dislodged, a place in which occur most of the trials that will cast it out, a place in
which redemption is at work.29
Balthasar could affirm such strong language at the conclusion of his essay because he understood
the Church through a set of distinct, simultaneous, and interdependent motifs wherein the church
is properly called both absolutely holy and still fully sinful in the present and through until the
end of time. Balthasar wrote, “the three motifs, of a present (existentially, not only institutionally)
absolutely holy bride, a church that is stained both now and until the end of time, and an eschato-
logically pure bride can exist simultaneously and interdependently, even complementing each other
fruitfully; indeed, it is even possible for Rahab and Mary to stand face to face” (302).
29
This paragraph is only part of what Balthasar quoted. The full quote is from Emile Mersch, La théologie du
corps mystique (Paris : Desclée de Brouwer 1944, 1946), 364–8. ET: Emile Mersch, The Theology of the Mystical
Body, trans. Cyril Vollert (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder, 1951), 305–8, here 306, 307.

10 Stephen D. Lawson
I propose that the best way of understanding the subtle interplay of these three motifs in the
essay would be to compare them to the different approaches to interpreting Scripture in patristic
and medieval theology (literal, allegorical, tropological, anagogical).30 Each level of meaning is
derived directly from the image itself and, in that sense, can be said to be independent; the levels
are not linearly successive such that one derives from another. At the same time, all of the levels
are interdependent in the sense that only recognizing one of them as true would result in a loss
of depth and mystery of the image. One level can indeed be the deepest, or most profound, but
that does not free it from interdependence on the other levels. Yet there is no higher synthesis to
which all the levels can be harmonized. Thus I argue that Balthasar’s understanding of the
church as casta meretrix operates on three different levels: 1) the church as presently pure, con-
sisting of harlot sinners who have been made virgins by the grace of God (associated especially
with the Rahab motif); 2) the church as fully pure in the eschaton and thus striving to become
now what she is promised to become (associated especially with the image of Mary); and 3) the
church as presently sinful, indeed even apostate, both in its members and in itself from now
until the end of time (associated primarily with the Hosea motif). Because Balthasar surveyed
historical sources in the essay, he did not treat each of these levels in a logically successive way,
but rather oscillated between them depending upon how the historical sources handled each
scriptural passage.
To say that the church is a casta meretrix is to say on one level that the church is a holy body
made up of saints who were formerly sinners. On this level Balthasar quoted Augustine who, in
a Christmas sermon, said that Christ “redeemed the church from her harlotry with demons and
made her into a virgin” (232).31 This is a true and legitimate way to interpret the image of casta
meretrix, one which emphasizes the purity of the church in spite of the former sin of its mem-
bers.32 The church does indeed consist of members who were once harlot sinners who have now
been made pure. However, it cannot be this in isolation. It is also dependent upon the other
motifs of the image. Balthasar argued that in the earliest church fathers there was a tendency
toward triumphalist supersessionism which claimed that the church was like Rahab, the for-
merly Gentile sinner once and for all time made pure in contrast with faithless Israel. If this
interpretation were taken in isolation as the sum total of all of the scriptural passages that refer
to the people of God’s sin through the language of harlotry, then it would weaken “the concept
of metanoia as something relevant to the church as whole” (239). Only as the interpretative
tradition developed with Augustine and his followers were other aspects of the image of casta
meretrix brought to bear. For these interpreters, the “truly pure church is an eschatological
concept” and therefore they are able to “overcome to some degree the deficiencies of the patris-
tic Rahab theology” (238).
A second legitimate way to understand the casta meretrix image, according to Balthasar, is
to see it as pointing eschatologically toward the image of the wholly pure church of Christ’s
30
In light of Balthasar’s significant dependence upon Origen, both in this essay and in his theology more broadly,
such an interpretive suggestion seems fitting. For a survey of the development of this hermeneutical theory, see James
S. Preus, From Shadow to Promise (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969).
31
Balthasar incorrectly cites this passage as coming from Augustine’s sermon 188 (which is also a Christmas
sermon); in reality it comes from sermon 191: “Nullo itaque modo virginitatem matri suæ nascendo Christus ademit,
qui Ecclesiam suam de fornicatione dæmonum redimendo virginem fecit.” PL 38, 1010.
32
In this respect Balthasar would disagree with Ephraim Radner who writes, “the traditional ecclesial representa-
tion of the casta meretrix is misunderstood if it is applied in terms of a chronological succession—first ‘whore,’ then
‘chaste.’” Ephraim Radner, A Brutal Unity: The Spiritual Politics of the Christian Church (Waco, TX: Baylor
University Press, 2012), 157. The image can and should be applied in that way. However, Radner’s concern is that the
image not bolster the church’s position by muting its own sinfulness. Balthasar shares this concern without finding it
necessary to dispense completely with this motif of the image of casta meretrix.

return. Under this motif falls Balthasar’s consideration of the relationship between the sins of
the members of the church and the church as such. The eschatological aspect of the image forces
the church to recognize the disparity between the pure vision of the future bride with the present
manifestation of the church in sinful members. There is a dialectic operative in this motif; the
church strives to be that which it already is eschatologically. Human beings who have been
brought into unity through their joining to the church are still fallible humans capable of all
kinds of sin and disunity. Balthasar noted that the fathers saw the unity of the church as “insep-
arably a gracious, institutional gift and something still to be realized ethically through love and
faith” (252). While that which is given can never fail, that which the members of the church are
trying to achieve often does fail. “The dialectic of ecclesial existence,” wrote Balthasar, “lies in
the undeniable reality of these two poles: ‘there is an infallibly pure Church! It is made up of
fallible human beings!’” (251).33 Indeed, the church is made up of fallible human beings, but—
unlike Journet—Balthasar did not simply locate the sin of the church in her members safeguard-
ing the church’s sinlessness by drawing a line across the heart of every Christian. Balthasar
insisted that “Church abstracted from her members is no longer the church” (276). In this level
of the image the church properly locates her sin in her members because that is indeed where it
lies empirically. This is the level where Balthasar placed Origen in his homilies on Ezekiel,
wherein Origen focused his criticism on the sins of those in positions of authority in the church.
“Origen speaks here with great care and moderation. He is speaking of the people of the Church,
not of the Church as such. But he speaks of these people as forming and representing the
Church” (271). Origen’s purpose, Balthasar pointed out, is to convince those who are self-
righteous in the church of their own “momentous guilt.”34
There is still a third way to understand the image of casta meretrix and it is the level Balthasar
took to be the deepest. The church as the church sins and turns away from Christ in the present
and will continue to do so until Christ’s return. The reason Balthasar affirmed this level of the
image is not because of the visible failures of the church as an institution or because of the sin
of members of the church, but because the church’s full proclamation of the gospel demands
such an affirmation. The stated goal of the essay is not to find a way in which to speak faithfully
of the church as sinful (though that is certainly an implicit goal that is achieved), but rather to
help Christians learn to see “at what price the holiness of the church has been purchased.” In
this, its deepest sense, the essay is christological, answering the question “how far does Christ’s
condescension go?” The image of the casta meretrix is ultimately an image of the Incarnation
of God into utter humiliation and indeed to the full depths of sin and hell. The image points to
“the extreme humiliating essence of the incarnation of God” (250).
Balthasar pointed to the christological motivation that makes the casta meretrix image so
central at a number of important points in the essay. In introducing the Hosea motif he wrote,
“Hosea is the image of the mercy of God, and of the extreme humiliation of his love; only
through this love is the harlot Israel, a type of the human Church, rescued and her offspring
rechristened. Only here does the theme reach its incomprehensible depth” (239–40, emphasis
added). It is certainly significant for Balthasar that he does not call this motif “the Gomer
motif,” but “the Hosea motif.” All of the other scriptural motifs whose history of interpreta-
tion Balthasar set out in the essay receive their title from the woman (Rahab, Eve, Tamar, the
Shulamite woman) or the entity (Jerusalem, Babylon) which is being accused of harlotry. Yet in
this motif, where the theme reaches its “incomprehensible depth,” Balthasar shifted the focus
33
This connects with the Eve motif, which is the presence of deceptive reason (i.e. heresy) in the church and its
eschatological cleansing.
34
At this level of the image there are similarities with Rahner’s approach.

entirely from the harlotry of the woman to the love of the husband. In this, Balthasar closely fol-
lowed Eph. 5:25–32 where the love of Christ for the church is compared to the love of a husband;
the emphasis is not on the church’s sin, but on the depth of the love that redeems it. On these
grounds Balthasar affirmed that the church itself is and will be guilty of the most grievous sin,
but he only affirmed that truth on the way to affirming a greater truth regarding how far God
descends to redeem the church.
This christological heart of the casta meretrix image is seen most explicitly in Balthasar’s
exposition of the New Testament’s treatment of the theme. “The New Testament speaks not only
of the security, which the church of Christ has been given, but there also stands, in harsh con-
trast, the threat of abuse, the possibility of apostasy. Nowhere is the immaculateness of the bride
a finished fact, which the bride only accepts and about which she no longer needs to worry”
(218). Even Baptism and Eucharist do not establish the church’s sanctity such that it no longer
needs to be concerned by it (Balthasar cites Heb. 6:4). Thus far this is not controversial; to state
that people in the church are capable of sinning, and that the church itself is sinful, is not new.
The next several moves that Balthasar made are remarkable. He intensified his tone, noting first
that the church’s sin, apostasy, is the worst possible sin imaginable, one in which damnation is
inevitable; then, in the very same breath, he insisted that it is precisely this sin that Christ has
taken into himself on the cross.
Because with the cross we stand at the end of all the ways of God, there is not, as for the
harlot Jerusalem, a final promise of overcoming all disgrace; this promise is already ful-
filled in the cross and thus in reality, mysteriously, the cross of Christ stands at the un-
imaginable place beyond all, even the ever-greater sin of the old and new bride. Whoever
strives beyond this absolute end, who does not allow himself to be content with it, ‘who
tramples on the Son of God and considers the blood of the covenant, by which he was
sanctified, as vulgar, reviles the Spirit of grace’: falls into a fiery abyss wholly different
than Korah’s gang: the ‘hands of the living God’ (Heb. 10:29–30). In this sense, the Old
Testament mystery of the harlot is surpassed in the final mystery of all, the mystery of the
cross (219, emphasis added).35
For Balthasar, the image of the casta meretrix is thus intimately related to the doctrine of Christ’s
atoning work on the cross. At its deepest level the church confesses that its sin has gone so far as
apostasy. The church confesses this mystery only on the way to confessing what has already oc-
curred for the world through Christ’s kenosis. In his death upon the cross and his descent into hell
Christ took upon himself the church’s apostasy.
In the innermost, purest core, the harlotry of the new daughter Zion is absorbed into the
supreme “foolishness of the cross” (1 Cor. 1:18), in which “what for the world was foolish,”
“what for the world was shameful,” “what for the world is ignominious,” “of no repute,”
even “the things that are not” (1 Cor. 1:27–28), which God has claimed for himself. This
dishonor and humiliation which goes as far as non-being, mê ὄν, comes from the Old
Testament: it is already in the name of Hosea’s children of harlotry; Paul expressly cites
this passage (Rom. 9:25–26), as does Peter (1 Pet. 2:10): it is this that God took upon
himself, overcoming every possible derision, every condemnation, in order to shame the
35
The published English translation of this passage incorrectly translates “Kores Rotte” as “Persephone’s crowd,”
when it is actually reference to Korah’s rebellion (cf. Num. 16:1–35).

wisdom of the Greeks and the Jews’ demand for a sign, the seal of which, out of the pure
grace of the cross, is also imprinted on the church (1 Cor. 1:26–28) (220).
Thus Balthasar held that it was essential for the church to confess herself to be a harlot (not only in
the past, but also in the present) so that the church can properly understand the depths of Christ’s
condescension. If the greatest sin is apostasy—for those who know the cross of Christ and who
have been cleansed from sin to positively reject it and turn back towards darkness and non-being—
then in order to understand the cross, Balthasar held, we have to ask if it covers even that sin.36
Balthasar answered yes to this question. At the essay’s deepest level Balthasar affirmed that we
must accept on faith that the church as the church is sinful because the cross of Jesus requires such
a confession.
Joseph Fessio, in his 1974 dissertation on Balthasar’s ecclesiology (a topic, he notes, recom-
mended to him by Henri de Lubac), recognizes this important aspect of Balthasar’s thought. In
an insightful section on the theme of the “Church of Sinners” in Balthasar’s work, Fessio notes
that, “the sin that was ‘outside’ her [i.e. the church] was drawn into her in virtue of the preve-
nient redemptive love of Christ, the light that shone in the darkness.”37 The church’s sinfulness
is intimately connected to the redemption Christ wrought for the whole world in his self-giving
love, which thus spurs the church into mission in the world of darkness. If indeed the darkest
sin, that of the church itself, has been taken up and made pure in Christ’s kenosis, then the
church cannot rest secure in herself, seeing the world as unredeemed “other.” For Balthasar,
Fessio writes, “all objectification of sin as an impenetrable block outside of the Church is ex-
cluded, and it is precisely in her disfigurement as the Church of sinners that the Church can be
the unconditioned and unswerving hope for the world of redemption from sin.”38
It is worth repeating that each of the three levels of interpreting the image of casta meretrix
for the church are interdependent. For Balthasar the church is a mystery which can only be
hinted at and grasped partially. “The Church is a mystery of love,” Balthasar wrote in the intro-
duction to the book that contains “Casta Meretrix,” “to be approached only with reverence.
Many windows have been opened for us to see into the center, but in the most-secret chamber
the Church remains hidden.”39 For Balthasar, each of these levels – the church as harlots who
have been made pure; the church in its eschatological purity juxtaposed with the empirical sin
of its members; and the church’s utter and repeated apostasy which has been taken up in Christ’s
descent – is necessary in order to grasp fully what the church is. It would occlude the mystery
36
That Balthasar considered the church to be guilty of a greater sin than the world is significant. Yet this is not the
only place he wrote about the church’s sin as being the deepest and worst sin possible. Two examples will suffice here,
one coming from his book on Georges Bernanos (first published in 1954), and one from Origen: Spirit and Fire (first
published in 1938). Balthasar wrote, “This is the mystery of the Church, which, as greatest of all cities, also has the
greatest accumulation of filth. And yet the Church processes her refuse, comes to terms with it, excretes it, and
changes it back into its original chaos, which is to say, into hell.” Hans Urs von Balthasar, Bernanos: An Ecclesial
Existence, third edition, trans. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1996), 366–67. And
elsewhere, “Origen was the first to look the whole truth in the eye: this spotless one is pure only because she is daily,
hourly absolved by the blood of Christ from her daily, hourly new faithlessness and harlotry. If ascensio takes place
here, then it is only in an always simultaneous descension, right down to the gutter.” Hans Urs von Balthasar, Origen:
Spirit and Fire: A Thematic Anthology of His Writings, trans. Robert J. Daly (Washington, DC: The Catholic
University of America Press, 1984), 12.
37
Joseph Fessio, “The Origin of the Church in Christ’s Kenosis: The Ontological Structure of the Church in the
Ecclesiology of Hans Urs von Balthasar” (ThD diss., University of Regensburg, 1974), 285. My thanks to Russell
Johnson for his help in locating this source.
38
Ibid.
39
Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Introduction,” in Explorations in Theology, vol. 2: Spouse of the Word (San Francisco,
CA: Ignatius Press, 1991), 11.

only to say one of these without at the same time keeping in mind the others. If asked whether
the church was sinful Balthasar would say both yes and no, though the “yes” is deeper than the
“no.” The church is, as Balthasar wrote in 1967, “half immaculate bride and half harlot, ever
ready anew for every backsliding and betrayal of her Lord.”40
It is evident that Balthasar approached the question of the sinfulness of the church in an en-
tirely different way than the ways other major Roman Catholic theologians were approaching it
around that time. Unlike Journet, whose explicit concern was to safeguard the church from sin
so much so that he drew a line down the middle of each member of the church, only including
that part of a person motivated by charity within the church, Balthasar stated clearly and repeat-
edly that the church’s members are sinful and yet remain wholly in the church. The church’s
fate, wrote Balthasar, “is in her members, and theirs in her. The sins of the sons and daughters
reflect back to the Mother, which is why she must pray in her members and beg for her own
salvation” (276). Unlike Congar, who considered it important for the church to accept that its
historical existence is often sinful insofar as her members are often sinners, yet the church’s
nature is indefectibly holy, Balthasar considered the church’s “exposed sinfulness” to be part of
her “essential, irreducible ambiguity.”41 Unlike Rahner, who considered the church as sinful
only because of the sins of her members, locating sin in the church as such but not sin commis-
sioned by the church as such, Balthasar insisted that it is the “ever-greater sin” of the new bride
that is taken up by Christ in the cross. Thus, Balthasar significantly differed from his own
theological context in both the answer to the question of the church’s sinfulness, and, more
importantly, in the approach to answering that question. At the deepest level Balthasar consid-
ered the church to be sinful because the mystery of Christ’s kenosis, and not the church’s ob-
servable failure in its members, requires such an admission.
Evaluating the Reception of “Casta Meretrix” in Recent Theology

Nicholas Healy offers a challenge to much recent ecclesiology in his book, Church, World and
the Christian Life. One of his convictions in the book is that the “church’s witness and its pas-
toral care are compromised when it fails adequately to acknowledge and respond to its sinful-
ness.”42 Healy critiques some theologians (such as Stanley Hauerwas43) for too strongly asserting
that what makes the church the church is its faithfulness. In a way reminiscent of Bishop Laszlo’s
plea in his speech, Healy writes that such accounts do not square with the church’s own ambigu-
ous existence.44 More recently, several theologians have answered Healy’s call for theological
40
Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Tragedy and Christian Faith,” trans. Brian McNeil in, Explorations in Theology, vol.
3: Creator Spirit (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1993), 405.
41
In a collection of aphorisms first published in 1953, Balthasar wrote, “In two places in creation the string of the
bow spanning matter and spirit is almost violently overstrung . . . In the supernatural realm, it occurs in the place of
the Church and her essentially, irreducible ambiguity, which consists of the poles of authority and obedience, exposed
sinfulness and exemplary holiness.” Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Grain of Wheat: Aphorisms, trans. Erasmo Leiva-
Merikakis (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1995), 124.
42
Nicholas M. Healy, Church, World and The Christian Life: Practical-Prophetic Ecclesiology (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2000, 2004), 25.
43
For example, Hauerwas writes, “what makes the church the church is its faithful manifestation of the peaceable
kingdom in the world.” Stanley Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics (Notre Dame, IN:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1991), 99.
44
Healy writes that for Hauerwas and others, “practice” becomes an idealized concrete action that does not “ad-
dress the confusions and complexities of practices as they are performed in ordinary congregations by ordinary peo-
ple.” Nicholas Healy, “Practices and the New Ecclesiology: Misplaced Concreteness?” International Journal of
Systematic Theology 5, no. 3 (2003): 296.

engagement with the sinfulness of the church. As these theologians look for precedent in theo-
logians of the past, several of them turn to “Casta Meretrix.”45
In his book A Brutal Unity: The Spiritual Politics of the Christian Church, Ephraim Radner
attempts to bring the issue of the church’s division to the fore of theological reflection.46 Radner
believes it to be essential for the church to confess that the church as such is sinful. To that end
he surveys various recent statements of ecclesial guilt (e.g. for the Rwandan genocide in 1994
or the church’s complicity with the Third Reich) and theological attempts to speak of the sins of
the church.47 It is in this context that Radner turns his attention to Balthasar’s essay. He ob-
serves that Balthasar was critical of supersessionist ways in which the image of the “chaste
harlot” has been applied to Israel in the history of the church and rightly notes that “Balthasar
seems to press for a more historically continuous Old Testament reference for the Church, that
is to say, a more ‘figural’ one, in which an Augustinian reading of the ‘mixed body’ will require
the Church’s sanctification over time, even through to the final judgement.”48 However, Radner
then problematically posits that Balthasar “ends his survey with a note of concern over the de-
veloping tension in the tradition between Church as sinner and Church as immaculate bride, a
concern resolved only by what he views as the late medieval recognition of a central Marian
ecclesiology (along with a developed Mariology of sinless conception). Only this will somehow
assure that ‘immaculateness’ should prevail over harlotry at the center of the Church’s being.”49
I suggest that there is not a final Marian resolution of the church-as-holy and the church-as-sin-
ful in historical time in Balthasar’s essay.
It is striking that Radner suggests Balthasar undercuts his own argument in the essay. In a
footnote he observes,
Oddly, von Balthasar ends his essay not with a quote regarding this Mariological resolution
but with a citation from Emil Mersch that does not mention Mary at all but rather focuses
on the intrinsically (“necessary”) sinful character of the Church as she exists in time not
epiphenomenally but as the essence of her character as human “body” taken on in time by
Christ . . . Within the bounds of this statement, Mersch provides the answer to von
Balthasar’s various queries in the course of the essay, although in a way that in fact under-
cuts the latter’s own implied Marian solution.50
I suggest that it is Radner’s reading of Balthasar’s essay, rather than Balthasar’s conclusion to the
essay, that is odd. For Balthasar, Mary is not a resolution that answers the question about the sin and
holiness of the church, at least not until the parousia; in the meantime “it is even possible for Rahab
and Mary to stand face to face.” While Balthasar used the image of Mary to discuss the church’s
45
Healy himself draws attention to this essay in his book. In his criticism of what he names as “blueprint” eccle-
siologies (i.e. ecclesiologies which understand one image or aspect of the church as the foundational image under
which all other images are set) for depending upon a foundational image that stresses the church’s perfection, they
limit the ability of ecclesiology to account for the church’s sinfulness. He writes that Balthasar’s “Casta Meretrix” is
a “significant exception” to this tendency, but then does not explore it in any way or mention it again. Healy, Church,
World and the Christian Life, 36 n. 44. I cannot help but wonder if Healy would still have considered Balthasar’s ec-
clesiology as “less than helpful” for his project if he had paid more attention to this essay of which he was clearly
aware. Ibid., 53.
46
Radner, A Brutal Unity. For my present purposes it is not essential to sketch the whole argument Radner prof-
fers. I am focusing my attention on his interpretation of Balthasar’s essay.
47
Ibid., 121–68.
48
Ibid., 150.
49
Ibid.
50
Ibid.

holiness and purity, he explicitly refrained from allowing that image to mute or solve completely the
issue of the church’s sinfulness. Rather, as Balthasar wrote right before quoting Mersch at the end
of his essay, the image of the church as sinful and the image of the church as pure can and should
“exist simultaneously and interdependently.” Balthasar can affirm such strong language at the con-
clusion of his essay not because he is undermining his own implied Marian solution (pace Radner),
but because he understood the church through a set of distinct, simultaneous, and interdependent
motifs wherein the church is properly called both absolutely holy in the present and still fully sinful
in the present and through until the end of time. Joseph Ratzinger was right when he wrote that in
“Casta Meretrix” “Balthasar has shown through an in-depth analysis that this is not just an histor-
ical statement in the sense that ‘At one time she was unclean—now she is pure,’ but that it points to
the permanent existential tension of the church’s existence.”51
William Cavanaugh also turns to “Casta Meretrix” in an essay responding to some of the
concerns of Healy and others.52 Drawing upon Gerhard Lohfink, Cavanaugh argues that it is
essential for the church to be visible as an exemplary community within the world. However,
such a stress on the visibility of the church immediately provokes the problem of the church’s
failure time and again to be such an exemplary community. Cavanaugh’s task, then, is to “give
an account of the church’s visibility that fully recognizes its sinfulness.”53 To do this, Cavanaugh
turns to the “post-Chalcedonian” christologies of Maximus the Confessor and Balthasar, sug-
gesting that Chalcedonian reflection upon the ways in which Christ “became sin” for us, when
connected to the church, can help safeguard against what Cavanaugh diagnoses as ecclesiolog-
ical Monophysitism and Nestorianism.
It is understandable that within this argument Cavanaugh turns to Balthasar’s essay. Several
of the insights Cavanaugh discerns from Balthasar are astute. For example, Cavanaugh writes,
drawing from Balthasar, “the church is closest to Christ when it assumes the same kenotic form.
This form is not accidental, but essential to the church.”54 However, Cavanaugh misunderstands
Balthasar’s subtle argument in the essay when he writes “It is not clear where Balthasar ulti-
mately stands on the question of the sinfulness of the church. He seems to make a distinction
between the church and its members when he says, ‘All Christians are sinners, and if the Church
does not sin as the Church, she does sin in all her members, and through the mouths of all her
members she must confess her guilt.’”55 In my interpretation of “Casta Meretrix” I have shown
that Balthasar explicitly affirmed that the church is sinful more than once in the essay, though
he does so in a subtle way that is best understood through a series of distinct but interdependent
motifs. Moreover, in the immediate context of the passage Cavanaugh quotes, Balthasar was
attempting to push even the most conservative theologians into squaring with the church’s prac-
tice of communal confession. “Even Charles Journet,” Balthasar wrote directly after the pas-
sage Cavanaugh cites, “who so scrupulously protects the Church as such from having any
blemish, cannot help but ascribe to it acts of penance (carried by grace) and the confession of
the sins of the church as such” (258). It is clear that Balthasar was not here advocating the stron-
gest form of his position, but was seeking to try to find common ground with theologians (like
51
Joseph Ratzinger, Das neue Volk Gottes: Entwürfe zur Ekklesiologie (Düsseldorf: Patmos-Verlag, 1969), 255.
Emphasis added.
52
William T. Cavanaugh, “The Sinfulness and Visibility of the Church: A Christological Exploration,” in
Migrations of the Holy: God, State, and the Political Meaning of the Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans
Pubishing Company, 2011), 141–69.
53
Ibid., 143.
54
Ibid., 164. Cf. Balthasar, “She is nearest to Christ when she assumes the same kenotic form” (287).
55
Ibid., 164 n. 44. Cavanaugh is quoting the Saward’s English translation of “Casta Meretrix,” 245.

Journet) who would be more than skeptical of Balthasar’s willingness to ascribe sin to the
church as such.
While several people have received “Casta Meretrix” critically, I draw attention to Cavanaugh
and Radner because they are two recent examples of systematic theologians who focus on the
topic of the essay (i.e. whether and in what way can we speak of the church as sinful). I contend
that both Cavanaugh and Radner have missed a significant part of Balthasar’s essay; namely,
that Balthasar did in fact claim that the church qua church is sinful. Indeed, the reading I am
proffering here would actually make Balthasar more of an ally to the positions that both
Cavanaugh and Radner take in their respective works.56
Balthasar’s essay has also received attention from those who see it as a manifestation of his
problematic approach to gender and sexuality.57 It is beyond the scope of this essay to engage
with the complex relationship between ecclesiology, christology, and sexual difference in
Balthasar’s entire oeuvre. A number of scholars have rightly underscored the inconsistent and
problematic (both ethically and theologically) ways that Balthasar appealed to gendered images
and language.58 Considered in itself “Casta Meretrix” does point to Balthasar’s tendency to
over-prioritize feminine images of the church, often stretching the biblical and patristic wit-
nesses beyond the breaking point, while glossing over other images from Scripture and the
tradition which might serve as a counterweight. For example, Balthasar did not problematize
the image of the casta meretrix by detailing the many biblical examples of male sexual promis-
cuity and violence, even though Scripture both includes concrete stories of such activities by the
representatives of the people of God (Gen. 38:15–26; Judg. 19; 2 Sam. 11:1–27, etc.) and uses
male sexual promiscuity as an analogy for the faithlessness of the people as a whole (e.g. Mal.
2:11–16). Moreover, although using sexual analogies to speak of sin or faithlessness in general
is widespread in Scripture and the tradition, those are not the only, or even the primary, analo-
gies for faithlessness.59 Scripture is replete with other analogies, such as animals who wander
from the care of the shepherd or children turning against their parents. In order to account for
the fullness of the biblical and patristic tradition, perhaps it would be better to speak of the
mystery of the “perfidious faithful,” a broad enough metaphor that could include the casta
meretix image without excluding other images. Finally, the presence of an image in Scripture
and in the tradition does not in itself justify its uncritical adoption today; few theologians would
suggest that the biblical phrase “synagogue of Satan” (Rev. 2:9) or the old Good Friday prayer
for the “perfidious Jews” should be uncritically repeated today. Given this, in light of the grow-
ing consciousness of the depths of male sexual violence, the casta meretrix image for the church
should not be uncritically repeated today. At the same time, I do contend that the central claim
56
I am not suggesting that Balthasar himself would be supportive for their projects as a whole. Here I reserve
judgment.
57
Tina Beattie, New Catholic Feminism: Theology and Theory (New York: Routledge, 2006), 174; Elizabeth T.
Vasko, “The Difference Gender Makes: Nuptiality, Analogy, and the Limits of Appropriating Hans Urs von Balthasar’s
Theology in the Context of Sexual Violence” The Journal of Religion 94 no. 4 (2014): 516–18.
58
E.g., Vasko, “The Difference Gender Makes”; Lucy Gardner and David Moss, “Something like Time; Something
like the Sexes—an Essay in Reception,” in Balthasar at the End of Modernity, eds. Lucy Gardner, David Moss, Ben
Quash, and Graham Ward (Edinburgh; T & T Clark, 1999), 69–137; Barbara Sain, “Through a Different Lens:
Rethinking the Role of Sexual Difference in the Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar,” Modern Theology 25, no 1
(January 2009): 71–96; Michelle Gonzalez, “Hans Urs von Balthasar and Contemporary Feminist Theology”
Theological Studies 65 no. 3 (2004): 565–95.
59
Balthasar’s essay has come under criticism for stretching the historical evidence by suggesting that the image
casta meretrix is far more important and present in the fathers than it actually is. Such criticisms can be found in
Hernán Guide, “Casta Meretrix: Acerca de la traducción y aplicación eclesiológica frecuente de una expresión
patrística,” Revista Teología 49, no. 107 (April 2012): 111–23; Giacomo Biffi, Casta Meretrix, “The Chaste Whore”:
An Essay on the Ecclesiology of St. Ambrose, trans. Richard J. S. Brown (London: The Saint Austin Press, 2000).

of Balthasar’s essay, that we must find a way to speak about how the church qua church sins, is
theologically significant.
My thesis thus far has been quite narrow. I have suggested that a single essay of Balthasar’s
has not been received in its fullness in recent theology. To argue this I considered the essay in
its theological milieu, noting that it differs markedly from the way at least three major theolo-
gians, whom I took to be representative of the spectrum of options available in the years leading
up to Vatican II, regarded the topic of the relation of sin to the church. That contextualization
gave way to a close reading of the essay itself wherein I drew out the different levels – subtle,
but clearly discernible – by which Balthasar was appropriating the image of the church as casta
meretrix. I demonstrated that Balthasar was willing to say that the church sins as the church,
indeed the church is guilty of the most grievous sin imaginable, apostasy, but Balthasar only
affirmed this as a byproduct of affirming how far God has descended in Christ’s kenosis.
Although my argument has been narrow the implications are significant for the interpretation
of Balthasar’s theology. It could offer great inroads for those looking to explore Balthasar’s
consideration of the church’s disunity (to this end it is significant that Luther is cited in the
opening of the essay).60 It has implications for the church’s worship (the meaning and necessity
of the communal confession of guilt) and the church’s mission (entering the world as one with
greater sin than the world).61 Perhaps most significantly it connects directly with Balthasar’s
most famous and controversial contribution to theology, the descent of Christ into hell on Holy
Saturday.62 While there remain many unanswered questions, I have argued that the time has
come for this essay to be reevaluated and re-received.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, in delivering the funeral homily for Hans Urs von Balthasar, said
that Balthasar
knew the church’s weaknesses and her misery, not only theoretically. He had hard and
painful experience of it throughout his lifetime. He knew Augustine’s phrase: “Our winter
is the hiddenness of Christ.” What he wrote about Holy Saturday certainly depended some-
what on his contact with the mystical experiences of Adrienne von Speyr, but at the same
time it was nourished as well by his own painful experience of the apparent absence of God
within his Church. But von Balthasar knew, with Augustine, that even “in wintertime, the
root lives on,” and that we live if we live from that root.63
Perhaps the mystery of Holy Saturday in Balthasar’s theology is like that “most-secret chamber”
Balthasar wrote of in the introductory essay about the church. Many windows have been opened for
us to see this heart of Balthasar’s theology, while the most-secret chamber remains hidden. Perhaps
“Casta Meretrix” is another window into the mystery of the descent of Christ for his blemished,
spotless bride.
60
Such ecumenical potential of this essay was briefly alluded to by Eberhard Jüngel. Cf. “The Church as
Sacrament?” in Theological Essays, trans. John Webster (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989), 210–11.
61
Of course, it also brings up the question of Balthasar’s ideas concerning apokatastasis. If, after all, Christ’s
sacrifice covers even the church’s “ever-greater” sin, what can be said about the lesser sins of those outside of the
church?
62
There is no citation of “Casta Meretrix” in Alyssa Pitstick’s critical treatment of the theme of Christ’s descent
in Balthasar, nor have I been able to find any reference in secondary literature on Balthasar where the theme of the
descent is connected with this essay directly. Alyssa Lyra Pitstick, Light in Darkness: Hans Urs von Balthasar and the
Catholic Doctrine of Christ’s Descent into Hell (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2007).
63
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, “Homily at the Funeral Liturgy of Hans Urs von Balthasar,” in Hans Urs von
Balthasar: His Life and Work, ed. David L. Schindler (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1991), 293.

The Sin of the Church Under the Shadow of Clerical Sexual Abuse
My argument in this essay has been a hermeneutical argument, focused on the interpretation
of one extended essay, but the motivation behind this examination has been deeper than hop-
ing to arrive at a fuller reading of Balthasar’s corpus. I contend that it is theologically essential
to affirm that the church is not only capable of sinning, but indeed does sin. This affirmation
is muted of any power if the culpability of sin is limited merely to individual members of the
church, which inevitably results in an egregious example of the “no true Scotsman” fallacy.
What is needed is an ecclesiology capable of coming to terms with the church’s divine charac-
ter, its apostolic deposit, without limiting the failures of the church in history merely to individ-
uals who happen to be in the church. All such attempts reveal a latent ecclesiological Docetism,
in which the pure essence of the church remains unaffected by the human vessels that carry it.
To be clear, the desire to preserve the church’s holiness, to safeguard its possession of some
supernatural character, is not in and of itself incorrect. Without such careful preservation, the
church is in danger of being relegated to a mere sociological reality. But such a preservation
should not prevent theologians from being able to attribute the sin of the visible church to the
church itself. Brian Flanagan articulates this well:
Various theologians and authoritative teachers have, correctly, warned against forms of
“sociological reductionism” in ecclesiology that would neglect the direct relation of the
church to the transcendent mystery of God through Christ and the Holy Spirit. Fewer
warnings have been issued about the dangers of “mystical reductionism” in which the
church is envisioned less as a pilgrim people walking in and through human history than
as a group of tourists serenely unaffected by their travels.64
The International Theological Commission’s (hereafter ITC) 1999 document, “Memory and
Reconciliation: The Church and the Faults of the Past”65 seems to move quite close to such a mys-
tical reductionism. The topic of the document was proposed by the commission’s president, then
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, in advance of the Jubilee Year 2000. The goal of the examination was
to arrive at a “liberating personal and communal conscience from all forms of resentment and vio-
lence that are the legacy of past faults, through a renewed historical and theological evaluation of
such events.”66 The theological treatment of this topic was invited by Pope John Paul II himself. In
Incarnationis mysterium, the bull announcing the Jubilee Year, he wrote that, though the history of
the church includes the lives of countless holy men and women who have preserved the church’s
holiness in history, history also includes events which “constitute a counter-testimony to
Christianity.” He continued, “Because of the bond which unites us to one another in the Mystical
Body, all of us, though not personally responsible and without encroaching on the judgement of
God who alone knows every heart, bear the burden of the errors and faults of those who have gone
before us.”67 John Paul II embodied this with his unprecedented apologies for numerous sins in the
church’s past.
64
Brian P. Flanagan, “Reconciliation and the Church: A Response to Bruce Morrill” Theological Studies 75 no. 3,
(September 2014): 628. See also, Brian P. Flanagan, Stumbling in Holiness: Sin and Sanctity in the Church (Collegeville,
MN: Liturgical Press, 2018).
65
International Theological Commission, “Memory and Reconciliation: The Church and the Faults of the Past,”
ht t p://w w w.vat ic a n.va /roma n _cu r ia / c ong r e gat i o ns/cfait h /ct i_docu m e nts/rc_con _cfait h _doc_ 20 0 0 0
307_memory-reconc-itc_en.html.
66
Ibid., Introduction.
67
John Paul II, “Incarnationis Mysterium,” http://www.vatican.va/jubilee_2000/docs/documents/hf_ jp-ii_doc_
30111998_bolla-jubilee_en.html, 11.

The ITC document attempts to make theological sense of such apologies, that is, to “clarify”
what requests for forgiveness on behalf of the church mean for the church’s claim of holiness.
The authors express concern that such apologies might be “exploited by the Church’s detrac-
tors” or could result in some in the church wondering “how they can hand on a love for the
Church to younger generations if this same Church is imputed with crimes and faults.”68 The
document proceeds by carefully describing how the church’s confession of guilt is only ever a
guilt for offenses committed by the church’s “sons and daughters.” Even when the sins for which
forgiveness is sought were committed by those in ecclesiastical authority in their practice of that
authority, there is not a requirement for “any Magisterial act of reparation,” they contend,
because there is a distinction between the magisterial charism and authority in the church.69
The result of such distinctions is that the ITC’s document blunts the scandal of the church’s
apologies, voiced by the pope, for myriad sins committed against individuals and groups.70 That
is, the ITC’s position has brought about the “strange phenomenon of a church confessing sins
but not claiming them as her sins.”71
On August 14, 2018, the Attorney General of Pennsylvania released a summary report from
a two-year grand jury investigation into six Roman Catholic dioceses in Pennsylvania.72 The
report details decades of predatory sexual behavior, especially against young children, by hun-
dreds of priests. In over 800 pages, the report chronicles sexual assault, rape, and the extensive
network that shifted predatory priests around, often giving them access to more children to
victimize. In total, the report recounts credible allegations against 301 priests who victimized
over 1000 children. Since the release of the report, new victims have come forward to add their
stories of abuse at the hands of priests to the accounts in the report. The Pennsylvania report is
the fruit of the most thorough investigation into abuse in the Roman Catholic Church in North
America to date. Numerous calls have been made for such sweeping investigations into abuse
in other states and countries. While one can and should hope that such investigations, conducted
open and honestly, will reveal that the abuse in Pennsylvania was an anomaly and no such wide-
spread abuse and cover-up was practiced elsewhere, that is unlikely to be the case. There is no
doubt that improvements have been made in recent years in holding priests accountable for their
actions and protecting victims from further abuse; nevertheless, it is still the case that the abuses
which plagued the six dioceses in Pennsylvania for decades were more likely the rule than the
exception and many of those responsible for failing to protect children are still in positions of
authority.
The scandal of clergy sexual abuse is not only a moral catastrophe that, like all such ca-
tastrophes, leaves lives irreparably damaged because of the destructive and horrific acts of
sinful individuals. It is also a theological catastrophe, for these priests were called, trained, and
ordained by a Church that placed them in positions as ambassadors for God, allowing them to
leverage the authority of their ordination to destroy vulnerable children entrusted to their care.
More than that, these priests were systematically insulated from accountability by a hierarchy
more concerned with the optics of admitting to the truth than obtaining justice and protection
68
ITC, “Memory and Reconciliation,” 1.4.
69
Ibid., 6.2.
70
In the Solemn Day of Pardon Mass on the First Sunday of Lent, 2000, Pope John Paul II led a litany of confession
which included prayers for the sins of the church including “sins committed in service of truth,” “sins which have
harmed the unity of the body of Christ,” “sins against the people of Israel,” “sins committed in actions against love,
peace, the rights of peoples, and respect for cultures and religions,” “sins against the dignity of women and the unity
of the human race,” and “sins in relation to the fundamental rights of the person.” http://www.vatican.va/news_servi
ces/liturg y/documents/ns_lit_doc_20000312_prayer-day-pardon_en.html
71
Flanagan, “Reconciliation and the Church,” 632.
72
Available at: https://www.attor neygeneral.gov/repor t /.

for the victims. The report reveals that time and again priests and their superiors did not merely
commit these sins as individuals, but explicitly leveraged their authority to act as the church.
One concrete example of this suffices.
The report details abuse at the hands of Fathers George Zirwas, Francis Pucci, Robert Wolk,
and Richard Zula, who together formed a group of priests who exchanged victims and “used
whips, violence and sadism in raping their victims.”73 One of their victims, given the name
“George” in the report to protect his identity, appeared before the grand jury in person and re-
counted the abuse he experienced. On one occasion, George was brought to a parish rectory
where several priests began to converse about religious statues. This conversation devolved into
asking the young George to pose on a bed as a model for a statue. The report reads:
As the priests watched, they asked George to remove his shirt. They then drew an analogy
to the image of Christ on the cross, and told George to remove his pants so that his pose
would be more consistent with the image of Christ in a loincloth. At that point, the priests
began taking Polaroid pictures of George. As the picture taking continued, the priests di-
rected George to take off his underwear. George was nervous and complied. . . . He stated
that all of the men giggled and stated that the pictures would be used as a reference for new
religious statues for the parishes. George testified that this occurred before he turned
18-years-old and that his genitals were exposed in the photographs. George stated that his
photographs were added to a collection of similar photographs depicting other teenage
boys.74
In the cross God identifies himself as pure victim, without a shred of guilt or violence in him,
and receives into himself the extremity of humanity’s expulsive violence, thus identifying himself
wholly with all victims. The priests here, who ostensibly knew Christ as the spotless victim who in
his victimhood binds himself to all victims, seemed intent on “crucifying again the Son of God”
(Heb. 6:6), going so far as to have their victim pose as Christ upon the cross. This is not only abuse
or even sacrilege; this is apostasy.
Yet George’s testimony did not end there. The report continues and recounts how George and
other boys were marked as vulnerable prey for the violent licentiousness of the Church’s priests.
George recalled that each of these priests had a group of favored boys who they would take
on trips. The boys received gifts; specifically, gold cross necklaces. George stated, “He
[Zirwas] had told me that they, the priests, would give their boys, their altar boys or their
favorite boys these crosses. So he gave me a big gold cross to wear.” The Grand Jury ob-
served that these crosses served another purpose beyond the grooming of the victims:
They were a visible designation that these children were victims of sexual abuse. They
were a signal to other predators that the children had been desensitized to sexual abuse and
were optimal targets for further victimization.75
George still has his cross today.76

In this context we must attend to the question of how and in what way the church can be spo-
ken of as sinful. Balthasar’s treatment of this topic, with its distinct and interdependent motifs,
73
Ibid., 234.
74
Ibid., 234–35.
75
Ibid., 235.
76
Ibid., 236.

allows for an examination of the sin of the church that is deeper than merely deflecting sin to the
members (or “sons and daughters of the church,” in the ITC’s language), even if those members
are part of the hierarchy. Balthasar was careful to safeguard the church’s apostolic deposit and
its anticipated eschatological purity, but he did not allow those concerns to detract from naming
the sin of the church as precisely a rejection of Christ, a rejection which is more grievous than
the sin of the world since it comes from those to whom extraordinary grace has been shown in
Christ. Without making sin the essence of the church (since there is no sin in the eschatolog-
ically purified church), Balthasar understood the persistence of sin and repentance to be part
of the church from its beginning and through to its final purification. It is surely not without
meaning for the doctrine of the church that Peter thrice denied Christ after the assurance that
he would be the rock upon which the church was founded. Balthasar wrote that “it would be in-
comprehensible” if words such as those of Jesus in John, “Did I not choose you, the twelve? Yet
one of you is a devil” (John 6:70), “referred only to the founding acts of the church, and would
have no more meaning for its continuing existence” (218).
Events like those recounted in the grand jury report rightly call us to a clear-eyed look at the
present reality of the people of God. But if Balthasar is right, and the telos of the theological
examination of the sin of the church is not to explain how the church is in some way unaffected
by such sin (inevitably by carving out some notion of pure, invisible essence of the church), but
to come to a deeper appreciation of the salvation won by Christ’s descent, then our reflection
cannot end with a full accounting of the manifold sin of the church, but only in a subsequent
communal confession and plea for forgiveness. The reaction of those in the church, especially
the clergy, to reading the report should be to don sackcloth and ashes and to cry out for salva-
tion that extends even to poor wretches like the church. We should not see in the cold, painful
realities recounted in the testimonies of victims an opportunity to deflect attention to individual
sinners in order to safeguard the church’s holiness, but should feel the need to beg that our Lord
will forgive the ever-greater debt of his church.
The sin of the church is ultimately something that is confessed as the church’s surest lex cre-
dendi. In every gathering for worship the church confesses her culpability for sin and the need
for salvation; this is not accidental to the church’s earthly existence.
For “church” cannot be saved and assured anywhere else than in the cross of her Lord (and
not in herself). And if she knows herself to be the fruit of the cross (and every Christian
knows that is what they are), then she will never move except in repentance and conversion
to this cross. Thus the church understands herself before God in her liturgy, which is her
surest lex credendi: “Keep, we beseech thee, O Lord, thy church in thine unfailing benevo-
lence, and since without thee human frailty cannot but fall, keep her ever by thy help from
all harm and lead her to salvation” (Collect, 14th Sunday after Pentecost). “May unending
mercy, Lord, cleanse and protect your church, and since she cannot remain without thee,
thy benevolence must always govern it” (Collect, 15th Sunday after Pentecost). Here and
everywhere, the church prays for herself and not merely for her children, with whom she
identifies herself in a maternal “as-if;” all these worshipers together are the church of
Christ, who ask for the purifying, sanctifying, protective grace (221).

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Modern Theology 00:00 Month 2019 DOI:10.1111/moth.

THE APOSTASY OF THE CHURCH AND

“There can be no ecclesiology that is not, at its core, Christology;

and if it is to proceed on the right lines, it must begin by renouncing itself.”

Hans Urs von Balthasar2

© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

The Theological Milieu of “Casta Meretrix”

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© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

“Casta Meretrix”: Overview and Interpretation

© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

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© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

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Evaluating the Reception of “Casta Meretrix” in Recent Theology

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George still has his cross today.76

© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

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