THE CATHOLIC CONCEPTION OF THE CHURCH

By David Braine

I. The role of the Church in the intimate union of mankind with God and as the sign of
the unity of all humanity and of the whole creation

In order to understand the Catholic doctrine of the Church, we have to set it in the
context of God's will in creating man and the significance of the Incarnation.
Man's nature is to be a bodily and historical being, set firmly as a part of the physical
universe, a part made able to respond or relate to God—as it were, to stand as the
representative of the physical universe so that in man the physical universe finds voice to
praise God. It is of the very nature of this universe to be historical or temporal, so that its very
continuance depends upon its being upheld by God—since at every particular time, every
particular “now,” the future is contingent because it does not yet exist and it depends upon
God for its very existence, just as much as creation depended on God for its very first coming
into existence.
It belongs to human nature also to be a social being. Each human being is set within a
context of community and interdependence with the rest of creation, biological and physical,
and more intimately with that which is local to him. This is a part of what is involved in being
a bodily spatial being—that some parts of the physical universe should be more local to him
than others. Thus, the locus of man is firstly some particular place or region on earth, then the
earth itself, and then the wider universe. But more particularly, he is set within a family or
society of other human beings. And he is set there in such a way firstly that each human
being matures through time from infancy to maturity and secondly that the widening circles
of society within which human beings are set should likewise develop through time or, as we
say, historically.
In willing the creation of man, God also willed his salvation. In the same act as God
willed to permit evil, he also willed a way of salvation which would accord with man's
nature. And this we see in the Incarnation and the way of salvation opened out by it. For, in
willing the salvation of man, an end in which man is to be brought into the intimacy of
personal relation to God, God does not will to do away with the bodiliness of man, nor with
his social character and historicality—he means to redeem and perfect his creation, not to
abolish it—and these three things, bodiliness, community, and historical character, are
precisely saved and respected, not done away, in the Incarnation.
For, in Jesus' decision to become man we have a decision to take up a particular
historical place in space and time, an acceptance not only of solidarity with man but of the
spatio-temporal particularity characteristic of a human person and of historically governed
modes of action. By this phrase, "historically governed," I do not mean empirically verifiable
or conformable to supposed laws as to how things normally occur in history, but only that a
person's human actions are temporally and spatially located so as to have effects either in the
very act or as later consequences according to a spatio-temporally realised mode of
connection. For my purposes, the “historical” is that which fits within the categories of space
and time as part of a true narrative of spatially and temporally interconnected states, relations,
and actions, and not merely that which fits with the patterns of a supposed “science” of
history. That is, in this use of the word, the resurrection of Jesus was an historical event, and
likewise the actions whereby the Spirit was given at Pentecost and also given in the
sacraments are likewise historical events—even though they do not occur according to
empirical law.
God's action in becoming incarnate was not just the satisfaction of some legal
requirement so that in virtue of it human beings individually before and after it might be
saved, but without its historical outcomes, that is its outcomes spreading out through space
and time in the characteristic historical way, being integral, not accidental importance for this
salvation. For it to be accidental would be, for instance, for it to be the case that, although
those who were saved afterwards might be assisted by an historically mediated knowledge of
God's action in Christ, so also those before the coming of Christ might be saved by some
knowledge of this same action which was not historically mediated (but, e.g., through
prophets or angels)—so that, although some historical outflow of God's action in Christ (e.g.,
that some people knew he had been crucified) was appropriate to its historical character as a
set of individual events, its historical outflow had no other vital role in the salvation of man.
Rather we must say firstly that God could not accept the role of being an historical
person without accepting the significance of this historicality. And this in particular involves
that those who live prior to the historical influence of his work in Christ are set in a different
relation to his salvation from those who come after this influence and for whose salvation this
historical influence has been instrumental. That is, the historical Church as the grace-laden
historical outflow of Christ's work is instrumental by historical process in the salvation of
those who come within it in a way in which this historical Church is not historically
instrumental in the salvation of those who came before. How this is so will become clearer
below.
But yet more importantly, we must say secondly that to be joined to the historically
constituted body of Christ, the social body of those incorporated into Christ, was not possible
until God had indeed become man and brought this body into historical existence. That is, it
is not just that to become a member of the Church belongs to the way to salvation, but that to
be a member of the Church belongs to what salvation is. In order to say this we must of
course have an adequate doctrine of the Church, a doctrine which places its key accents not
just on the concrete empirical canonical or juridical aspects of the Church's nature as it passes
through history, but upon its spiritual character as the company of those incorporated into
Christ. And this is where the explanations associated with the phrase "the mystical body of
Christ" are of key importance.
Let us therefore firstly consider the character of the Church as the mystical body of
Christ and secondly consider its role as instrument of salvation.

A. Membership of the mystical body of Christ as key to salvation

There are two dangers.
In the first place, we have always to ward off purely legalistic accounts whereby Christ's
passion is of merely external significance for salvation, securing that a legal bar may be
removed—accounts which represent a key spiritual effect (justifying faith) as secured by the
Holy Spirit without the humanity of Christ playing any instrumental role and in such a way
that it is this action of the Holy Spirit alone which is relevant to salvation.
We have to avoid this legalistic view because of what salvation in fact consists in. It does
not consist just in many individuals each individually being related to God in friendship or
communion by the Holy Spirit. Nor even does it consist in a whole diversified body of
individuals being in what can be called friendship or communion with God. Rather it consists
in a relationship with God first fully opened out by Jesus in his earthly life and made
available to us by his breathing the Holy Spirit into us in such a way that we also can pray
"Abba, Father" and are constituted sons of God in a unique sense by this. And it is he who
breathes the Spirit into us, the Spirit diversifying us in such a way as to make us Jesus' own
mystical body, the social body of which he is the head.
Since this is what salvation consists in, there can be no salvation to which Jesus
becoming man and remaining man, and his being a man who has died for us and risen again,
humanly alive and active forever although now invisibly, is not internal. Man's ultimate
salvation—i.e., not just as the fact that he is saved, but as the whole state given in being saved
—involves a rounded restoration of the whole of human nature, every aspect brought to
fulfilment and glory, every aspect integrated in a relationship alongside Jesus to God as
Father, making us one family and body with Jesus and the whole human race as his other
brothers and sisters, and one community with the whole universe. And, this ultimate salvation
involves Christ's breathing the Holy Spirit in his glorified human state, the state in which his
Spirit relates us to him.
In the second place, we have to avoid an account which makes salvation inaccessible to
any of those who came before Christ's incarnation and inaccessible to those who come later
apart from his influence mediated through this-worldly historical events.
The logic of the situation does not in fact present a real difficulty. Many before the time
of Christ's earthly work and apart from its historical influence were made ready to enter into
salvation—one could say made ready to enter into a heaven with a human dimension, a
heaven in which bodily emotional historical human beings could have a place—but there is
no way in which they could actually enter into this salvation until such a heaven, a haven of
salvation, had been brought into existence. And this happened only with Christ's resurrection
and his being humanly glorified into his heavenly state (what we call his ascension). Further,
for human beings to be in such a heaven it is necessary not only for them to be in a state of
being saved, as if a human being could have full exercise of human nature as a mere
individual alone, but for them to be in a community of salvation, since human beings are
social by nature. God has willed not only a salvation involving such intimate relation with
him as to involve an interdependence, an interplay between God himself and the person
saved, but also a salvation involving an interdependence, an interplay between those who are
saved. The communion of love is not only between God and each human being but between
each human being and every other.
Therefore, what we first have to grasp is the nature of this community of salvation, and
then there is no difficulty in the idea that those prepared for it, orientated towards it, should
enter into it, once such a community is constituted or in existence.
At this stage, we can helpfully consider the explanations of St. Thomas Aquinas as to
how we are saved.
In considering what is required for man's salvation, one must distinguish two different
questions, though the answers are liable to prove interrelated in the way explained in the
earlier essay, “The Incarnation and Man's Salvation”:
1. What makes it fitting for God to give grace either to individuals or to the whole human
race, or, sin having arisen, what makes it again fitting for God either to give grace to
individuals or indeed to open it to the whole human race?
2. Once a person is in a state of grace, i.e., possessed by that basic, enabling, or saving
grace of which we spoke earlier, potentially or, after Jesus' Passion and glorification, actually
in union with Jesus in his humanity as well as his divinity, as it is said, “a member of Christ,”
what is it which atones for the sins of that person, both the sins which precede his coming to
grace and sins which arise after it?
Let us address the second question first. Aquinas explains, "The head and members [of
the Church] are as one mystical person; and therefore Christ's satisfaction belongs to all the
faithful as being his members.” This also fits with the pattern whereby, in virtue of a
relationship of charity between two persons, what one does can atone or “satisfy” (satisfactio
is the Latin word he uses for “atonement”) for the offences of the other (S. Th. III, Q. 48, art.
2, Obj. 1).1 The headship of Christ is key to Aquinas' understanding of how Christ atones for
our sins.2 In explaining how Christ's Passion causes the forgiveness of sins, when specifying

1He adds that in this way atonement differs from contrition and confession: one person can atone for
another, even though they cannot be contrite or confess for another.
2At the very beginning of his explanation of how Christ's Passion achieves its effects, Aquinas explains (S.
Th. III, Q. 48, art. 1, corp.) "As stated earlier (Q. 7, arts. 1 & 9, Q. 8, arts. 1 & 5), grace was bestowed upon
Christ, not only as an individual, but also as he is the head of the Church so that it might overflow into his
members; and therefore Christ's works are referred to himself and to his members in the same way as the works
of any other man in a state of grace are referred to himself. But it is evident that whosoever suffers for justice's
sake, being in a state of grace, merits his salvation thereby, according to Matthew 5:10: ‘Blessed are they that
suffer persecution for justice's sake.’ Consequently Christ by his Passion merited salvation not only for himself,
how it is by redemption he explains this by saying, "For since he is our head, then, by the
Passion which he endured from love and obedience, he delivered us as his members from our
sins, as by the price of his Passion: in the same way as if a man by the good industry of his
hands were to redeem himself from a sin committed with his feet. For, just as the natural
body is one, though made up of diverse members, so the whole Church, Christ's mystical
body, is reckoned as one person with its head, which is Christ" (S. Th. III, Q. 49, art. 2,
Reply). In this way, the merits of Christ suffice to atone for all the sins of those brought into
charity, communion, or union with him.
Both Leo and Aquinas make a comparison with medicine: Jesus does not free all men
from death, but he provides medicine which (if they avail themselves of it) is able to free
them from death; he prepares a medicine by means of which all sicknesses can be cured, all
sins past, present, or to come (S.Th. III, Q.49, Art. 1, ad 3), but yet a medicine which needs to
be applied to each person for their personal sins to be forgiven (ibid., ad 4). Aquinas goes on,
“Christ's Passion works its effect in those to whom it is applied through faith and charity and
the sacraments of faith” (S.Th. III, Q. 49, Art. 3, ad 1) and “Christ's satisfaction works its
effect in us inasmuch as we are incorporated with him as the members with their head,” this
membership requiring conformity with the head by “receiving the spirit of adoption of sons”
(ad 3).
Thus, within Aquinas' summary of the explanations of the Fathers as to the reasons for
Christ's Passion (Q. 46), the way in which it achieved its effects (Q. 48) and what these
effects are (Q. 49), the whole possibility of Christ's Passion satisfying for men's sins—or, in
traditional figures, of his bringing about our salvation “by merit,” “by atonement,” “by
sacrifice,” and “by redemption” (Q. 48), and of his freeing us from sin, delivering us from the
power of the devil, freeing us from the debt of punishment, reconciling us with God and
opening the gate of heaven to us (Q. 49)—is made to turn on our being brought into solidarity
with him as members of a body of which he is the head.
We raised two questions, one as to what made the giving of grace (especially the giving
of grace after sin) fitting, and the other as to how it was that Christ satisfied for the sins
(before or after the reception of grace) of those who have received grace, that is, who have
entered into communion with God by being brought into solidarity with Christ. So far,
Aquinas' discussion seems to throw light only on the second question, the question we said
we would consider first. However, now, standing back from the discussion, we can see that,
apart from sin, it was always God's purpose that man should be in communion with him and
man was made in such a way that this was fitting. The difference made by sin was only this,
that God's underlying original purpose should be realised without violation of the basic nature
of man, and so without prejudice to his dignity and solidarity as an intrinsically social being.
The way in which God achieves his purpose is not by separate actions securing each aspect of
what is required, but by one plan which at once secures all aspects of human dignity,
including his solidarity or social nature. It is upon this last aspect that we have to concentrate
our attention in our present discussion.

B. The character of baptism: the sense in which it is instrumental in the giving of grace
The realisation that salvation is something which human beings can only enter into in
community, and only as incorporated into Christ, i.e., joined with him in a way which
depends upon his humanity, raises a question as to the difference between the way in which
those to whom the historical grace-laden influence of the ministry of Christ through the
Church has not been accessible (e.g., those who lived before the coming of Christ) enter into
salvation and the way in which those who come to salvation through the historical influence
of that grace-laden ministry, most obviously and conspicuously as exercised in baptism. The
clue to understanding this difference is provided by Hebrews, speaking of the just of the Old

but likewise for his members."

Testament: "They did not receive what was promised, since God had made provision for us to
have something better, and they were not to reach perfection except with us" (11:40).
In order to see this matter in its proper light, we must consider the whole dispensation or
economy of God, including the doctrine of original sin, in the context of the desire of God for
the salvation of all men, so that none will be outside this salvation except by their own will.
The will of God for man included a spiritual solidarity of man with man: it is for this reason
that the sin of one man, or sin of some men amongst men, affected the whole of mankind.
The desire of God is that all human beings should be in a relationship of personal love to him.
But it is no more in the power of man of himself to love God with a personal love than for a
cow to jump over the moon. Indeed it is less in the power of man since to love God with a
personal love requires an infinite capacity. Sanctifying grace is the gift whereby man is made
able with the help of divine power to love God with personal love.
The doctrine of original sin arises from the following facts. (1) If no man had sinned,
then the normal state of all men would have been to come into existence with this gift so that
the whole ambience of their life would be from the first moment of their existence an
ambience within which they were in loving personal relationship with God. (2) Because sin
entered in amongst men, God made it so that no man at all had this gift, none were in this
ambience unless by a special act of God in giving it to them individually—that is, the sin of
one affected the whole community of mankind. (3) The reason why God worked in this way
was not in order to remove any human being from the possibility of salvation, but in order not
to change the character of human nature, not to remove the spiritual community of man with
man. (4) God had to permit sin so as to leave human freedom and dignity intact, but this also
involved the character of mankind to be communal, therefore allowing the sin of one to affect
others. (5) But he willed this preservation of the positive things in human nature, despite the
fact that they allowed the possibility of sin, because he also willed that in virtue of the same
community man should be open to salvation, because it is by spiritual community with Jesus
in his humanity that we are saved—so that the same character of being spiritually communal
which makes the sin of one affect all (what we call “original sin”) also provides the means of
our salvation, the means whereby Christ is able to save us. For as St. Paul said, “As in Adam
all died so in Christ are all men made alive.” Or we could say: “As in the first mankind all
died, so in Christ all men are made alive,” since Adam stands for anthropos, not just for anēr.
None could have trust in God or the personal love expressed in and forming this trust
without the gift of sanctifying grace. And God has showered this gift abundantly amongst
men from the beginning of human history.
According to the Biblical picture, it is seen in Abel, in Enoch, Noah and the other
patriarchs even before the dispensation to the descendants of Jacob, in Melchizedek, in the
Canaanite king Danel spoken of by Ezekiel, in Job and in a multiplicity of other just men
outside the covenant with Israel, as well as in Abraham, and all those of Israel who put their
trust and hope in God. But according to Christian teaching all such life of trust and love was
in the context of a trust and hope that God would open a way to bring man to a complete
salvation, and in this context, as we shall see later, Aquinas speaks of both explicit and
implicit faith in a mediator to come.
A fortiori all those after the coming of Christ, in whom the Holy Spirit works in advance
of any historically mediated knowledge of the work and person of Christ in history or of any
firm knowledge of this, in times later than his coming, just as much and more than in times
before it, are open to such faith in a mediator and a trust and hope that God will bring them to
a complete salvation. Their faith would not be an explicit faith in a mediator to come as with
Jews with knowledge by the prophets before Jesus' passion, but an implicit faith that God
would provide a mediator, or had provided a mediator of whom they had not learnt, or as
Aquinas puts it, “Implicit faith through believing in divine providence, since they believed
that God would deliver mankind in whatever way was pleasing to him” (S.Th.II, II, Q. 2,
Art.7, reply 3). It would be a grace-given and grace-directed faith ready to receive the
knowledge of the work and person of Christ, and not compromised by any acceptance of false
Christs.
Sanctifying grace is nothing other than the root from which personal love and trust
towards God arise, each forming the other. We have recognised this personal trust and love as
in fact, the fact made plain by the Incarnation, bound up with a trust and hope in respect of a
dispensation bringing a rounded salvation to man. Accordingly all sanctifying grace is
orientated towards this rounded salvation, the salvation within which human solidarity in
grace takes concrete form and is realised historically so that there is an integration of the
spiritual and the concrete, at first even literally in embryonic form only grows through the
spiritual's being realised in the carrying of the concrete to the maximum fulfilment of its
potentialities, in their bodily, communal, and historical character.

C. God's gratuitous providence for all human beings whereby, if they are willing, they
should share in the life of heaven and of the community of the Church, and the
historical character of the working out of this providence amongst human beings
This then is the context within which we should view the Church. The situation is not
that those who are not baptised, and so not are visibly members of the Church, can never
come to salvation. On the contrary, Hebrews gives us a picture of all the just of the Old
Testament entering into salvation, but doing this only now with the Church, waiting until
Christ's passion and glorification, “waiting to enter in with us” (cf. 11:40)—only then to
constitute together the “assembly of the first-born citizens of heaven.” Indeed, just as God
freely gave sanctifying grace to the just of the Old Testament as a precondition of their
responding to him in explicit faith and love, so God is free to give sanctifying grace to each
and every human being.
God is never limited to acting by the sacraments. Thus, according to tradition, the
innocents in Bethlehem murdered at the command of Herod are the Holy Innocents, given
sanctifying grace—suffering a kind of elemental martyrdom. They are thus associated with
the holy people of God in a way reminiscent of that in which Jewish children killed in the
holocaust share the honor of death for the sake of the Name with those adult Jews they
suffered with who did not betray this Name in ways seen or unseen (as in at heart denying
association with this Name or in being willing corruptly to collaborate). And, if the innocents
without any explicit faith can thus be given grace so as to inherit salvation, so also God is
free to bring to salvation all the unbaptized not old enough to prefer other things to him,
whether before or after Christ's Passion. What is required is that in God's ordering of things
the providence whereby initial grace or the grace of continuance is given is always in such a
way as to integrate this giving of these graces in the closest available way with the historical
work of Christ and with the workings of the Spirit—the Spirit's workings both in preparation
for the historical work of Christ and through the community issuing from it.
The gratuitous character of grace arises not from any arbitrariness in God's action but in
the fact that the ultimate order of all things is a work of which he is author.
We know of God's dispositions to give grace from Revelation. Accordingly, it belonged
to his plan that the first human beings and all the angels should be, by God's gratuitous gift,
given grace enabling them to love God supernaturally, from the first moment of their
existence, even though these human beings and some of the angels were to prefer their own
ways to this freely given supernatural friendship with God. As God determined to restore
grace to mankind, and to make its proper and full working out possible through his Son's
taking on human nature in the servile condition to which mankind came because of sin, so it
was fitting that grace to love God supernaturally should be given to the one who would, on
behalf of the whole human race, consent to be mother of the Son of God and not be
scandalised by his death on the cross but consentingly present and afterwards praying with
the apostolic group waiting for Pentecost. But for those whom he foreknows will be baptised
as infants, it is more fitting that their receiving of this grace be through the instrumentality of
those whom he historically sent to spread the Gospel and preach repentance. Thus, the whole
plan of God's providence requires that the grace whereby human beings can come to
salvation should be given at times which fit with the social and historical character of human
life. And this positively requires that this grace should be given to different human beings at
different times in their life according to their vocation and role in the historical unfolding of
God's plan for the Church, God having a providence for each individual dovetailing with his
providence for the whole community of salvation. Yet this places no impediment to his
giving of grace without baptism to those whose lives he foreknows are going to be cut short
before opportunity of baptism.3
The historical unfolding of God's plan for the Church involved that the Church should
grow historically and in stages bring into the ambit of concretised friendship with God more
and more aspects of the rich potentialities of human nature and its opening out in different
cultures. This plan involved also that the Church should be all the while also suffering in the
course of the same struggle with evil in the world with which Jesus struggled, an evil which
he met with not only amongst those who became his enemies but also amongst his own
immediate followers. For historicality requires that the evil tendencies at work in the world
should also be encountered within the Church.
How then are we to understand the nature of baptism or the historical work of the Church
bringing people into its membership as instrumental in the giving of the Holy Spirit? Or, to
put it differently, how can it be right to regard being a Christian and being a member of the
Church as inseparable? For this is the way the Fathers regarded it, conspicuously St.
Augustine in the Confessions.
What we have to understand is that for the dispensation of salvation to be appropriate to
man's nature as a bodily, social, and historical being, it has to be the norm that it is by one
and the same act that a person, on the one hand, is given sanctifying grace, made able to pray
“Abba, Father,” joined with Christ, and on the other hand, made a member of the concrete
historical social missionary community called the Church. That is, it is the norm that
sanctifying grace is given in the same concrete act as a person is made a member of this
visible community and that a person is made a member of this visible community in the same
concrete act as he is regenerated by grace. When I say that this is the norm, I mean that it is
the situation which most exactly exhibits the nature of the Church as at once a visible
community constituted by the historical action of Christ and a spiritual community moved by
faith-formed love based on grace, spread over all times and places and embracing not only
the living but all those who have gone before, beginning with the assembly of the first-born
spoken of in Hebrews 12:23.
This perspective is implicit in the linking of baptism with incorporation into Christ in the
New Testament, and is expressed in the refusal to omit infant baptism. Infant baptism marks
the priority of God's giving of grace to our life of faith and love towards him. It also marks
3 In regard to infants, including the unbaptised, Augustine says, “Who knows what is in store for those
children ...? Who knows what reward God has prepared for them in the hidden depths of his judgments? For
while it is true that they never acted rightly, they suffered without sinning. It is not without reason that the
Church celebrates as martyrs the children who were killed when Herod sought the life of the Lord Jesus Christ”
(On free choice of the will, Book 3, Section 23). A modern theologian has been similarly reticent, saying, “I
would prefer to leave their destiny in the general category of 'joined to the Paschal mystery in a way known only
to God'—which could mean either resurrection to natural (yet still God-centred) happiness or the beatific
vision.” However, in view of the statement that "God desires all human beings to be saved," the New Testament
allows us to go further in the way I have suggested, and, if this suggestion is accepted, there is no need to
postulate a Limbo for infants. For God's grace to be truly gratuitous, given freely, and not something which the
human being can require of God by right, something to be hoped for as desired by God, but not something
promised by God, does not mean that any need lack grace through the historical accident of being aborted in
miscarriage or dying before any opportunity of baptism or the coming to faith. That is, God's willing the greater
good that the community of salvation should form one community through relation to Christ need not have the
by-product that any lack the opportunity of grace. It would be especially unfitting that some should lack this
opportunity simply as a result of the sin of those who first brought sin to humanity, albeit in view of God's
desire that humanity be saved as one community, when the Church's tradition has taken the view of Irenaeus
that Adam himself would be saved and that to hold otherwise would be heretical.
the wrongness of establishing a false chasm between the younger members of Christian
families as outside the hope and inheritance of salvation and the community of their elders
amongst whom grace has shown itself in explicit faith. But this perspective, thus given in
apostolic tradition, can also in retrospect or on reflection be seen to fit with the idea of a way
of salvation appropriate to man.
But from this perspective it does not at all follow that the unbaptised, whether young or
adult, will not be saved, but only that as Hebrews tells us in regard to the just of the Old
Testament, "They did not receive what was promised, since God had made provision for us to
have something better, and they were not to reach perfection except with us" (Hebrews
11:40).
We should form the following picture.
God has a providence for each and every human being, leaving none outside the
possibility of salvation. In the exercise of God's freedom, he will secure that every human
being will, by the time of his death, receive sanctifying grace unless, being of the age of
reason, he or she by some grave decision rejects it. But he exercises this providence
differently for those destined to come within the access of the historical mission of the
Church and for those not so destined, such as those before Christ's coming. The latter receive
grace, but do not receive what was promised or reach their goal except in company with those
who receive grace through the historical mission of the Church. And for these latter, the
giving of grace is sealed in baptism.
The fact that it is by a concrete historical act that their receiving of grace is sealed is not
a reflection of a mechanical view of baptism but a reflection of God's determination that the
salvation to be given to men should be one appropriate to man—appropriate, that is, to a
being at the same time both spiritual and bodily/social/historical. That the receiving of
sanctifying grace by those who God knows to be destined to enter the ambience of the
Church should be delayed until sealed in baptism or until he moves them to be joined to the
Church as catechumens is not a deprivation but an embodiment of the fact that in the context
of the Church in its concreteness they are entered into the way of a more integrated, fully
human, bodily social, and historical realisation of what baptism is orientated towards. The
community, the Church, was wrought out by Christ's pouring out the fruits of his Passion in
giving the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, thereby constituted in historical concrete existence. This
Church is present on earth not only as a concrete community of salvation, but as the context
in which every gift of God to man is to be brought to fulfilment in relation to and expression
of this salvation—each use of intellect and form of art amongst each people and in each
culture, each revealed in works of love and each having modalities revealed in the context of
human weakness as well as of strength.
Scripture tells us that God desires the salvation of every human being. Aquinas is of the
opinion that by angels human beings can be accorded a private revelation so as to have faith
(S.Th. I, Q 111, Art.1, cf. S.Th. II, II, Q.2, Art. 7),4 and that even without receiving any
revelation, human beings and angels might be saved, believing in a mediator in the way I
mentioned earlier “through believing in divine providence, since they believed that God
would deliver mankind in whatever way was pleasing to him” (S.Th.II, II, Q. 2, Art.7, reply
3), so that none need come to death without the possibility of an act of loving faith. And I
have portrayed how even the immature, and amongst these even the unbaptised (I instanced
the innocents of Bethlehem), may yet enter into the final inheritance of the adult and the
baptised.
In general, what one must not do is so understand God's desire for man's salvation as to
make either God's mercy or human freedom meaningless. On the one hand, God's mercy
must not be negated by supposing that there are some human beings to whom his salvation is

4 Aquinas pictures this revelation as possible even if it is only given privately (individually) through an
angel, but this is not limiting (it does not mean through a vision of an angel, as in Luke 1), although it does not
exclude this. Just as the devil has been thought to put thoughts and imaginations into our minds without needing
to “appear” himself, so the angels who care for us can influence our thoughts without appearing.
inaccessible. However, on the other hand, human freedom must not be negated by supposing
that God will never accept “No!” for an answer. Man often says “No!” and yet God offers
mercy yet again; yet man never says “No!” without a risk, because God's mercy is not
automatic, and if it were then there would be no ultimate human freedom in friendship with
God. It would be a negation of human freedom if man could never exercise determination and
perseverance in saying “No!” to God, if God would never take “No!” for an answer.

D. The unity of creation

Christ is also presented to us as breaking the power of the devil. For it is set deep in
Judaism and Christianity, and even in human experience, that there are supernatural powers
of evil rampant in the world so that it is not only sin and guilt that Christ overcomes in
redeeming human beings, but also the powers of the devil along with other evil spirits to
influence man—indeed it is because of this context whereby evil power is restrained that our
free will is preserved so that we can still focus on love of God, rather than being dominated
by fear of the devil.
In Jewish and medieval conception, as the earth was the lowest and most ignoble place in
the universe, so also human beings were the lowest amongst intellectual beings, and it has
always been irrational to imagine that there is no spread of other creatures, pure spirits higher
than man. Christians and Muslims have inherited from the Jews the conception of the angels
as in the immediate presence of God, praising him and expressing his glory, while also
ministering to mankind.
Now we saw earlier how God is never overreached in his purposes, not even so
frustrated by human choice as to withdraw his goodwill from mankind, or so frustrated as to
withdraw his gift whereby human beings are intimately communal. Therefore, so also in this
case: because the ultimate end of mankind and the universe includes a community between
human beings and angels,5 God did not allow the fact that the devil and his angels preferred
independence to the dependence involved in friendship to break this community: he did not
separate the angels from mankind.
Accordingly, the devil, Satan, is conceived to have been free to influence human beings,
playing a part in the coming of evil into the world but without removing free will or the
possibility of salvation. He is presented in the Book of Job as the Adversary (prosecutor) in
the court of heaven, and elsewhere as the father of lies, by contrast with the Holy Spirit as the
Paraclete (a legal term for the counsel for the defence) and spirit of truth. And in the same
temporary period in which this community between the angels and mankind leaves Satan
with influence for evil, this community allows the good angels to minister to us in
anticipation of the time when we will be joined with them in the community of heaven.
This is the scriptural picture, and the constant tradition of the Church. Community is
preserved, the subsidiary evil it allows being counteracted by overriding good, the service of
one to another, the prayer of one for another, in order that the ultimate end should be the
glory of a community—a whole orchestra being joined in praise of God and the enjoyment of
the fullness of heaven, not many instruments isolated from one another.
Thus, the same principle of allowing evil in order that greater good might come figures
not only in the permission of original sin but also of the working of evil powers, and it is over
both that Christ brings victory.
This, then, is how not just every willing human being but every kind of intellectual
creature of whose existence Revelation tells us, most gloriously the angels, are, through the
work of Christ and the salvation he wrought for man, brought into one single community of
praise of Jesus, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, in the way portrayed in the Book of
Revelation. The angels came into existence at the same time as the natural universe so that

5This conception is the one Aquinas evidences by reference to various Fathers as well as by argument. He
conceived even the angels as created in relation with the world, and as having a succession of acts though not at
dividing points in our continuous time (S. Th. Ia, Q. 61, art. 3, & Q. 62, art. 5, reply 2, cf. art. 9, reply 3).
(not in virtue of their natures, but in virtue of God's gracious plan) they should minister to
mankind and share mankind's joy.

E. The notion of the Church as a sacrament or instrumental sign

The concreteness of the Church, the concreteness appropriate to human nature, is a
consequence of what was involved in God's acceptance of historicality in the Incarnation.
This solidarity with human beings brought about by God's becoming man carried with it that
the same Spirit given to Christ should be extended to his brethren, and that they should join in
the continuation of his work of preaching and extending the kingdom of God as something
concretely realised on earth. For, if we observe the work of Christ, this was not limited only
to dying on the cross in order to satisfy for our sins but extended to a preaching of the
kingdom of God, a promise to the Apostles that they would “do greater works than these” and
a commission to baptise and teach. The preaching of the kingdom which was initiated in
Jesus preaching to Israel in his earthly ministry was to be extended to all nations after the
Spirit had come upon the Apostles and the Church with power at Pentecost.
Thus, the Church was to extend to all the nations, and the richness of all the nations was
to be brought into the Church thus universal. In it, representatively, each human faculty is to
be brought to or exhibited in the full use for which it was designed so that as it were every
instrument in the orchestra should be vindicated and shown in its proper use, its capacity for
right use being exhibited in act, and every culture being allowed to illuminate in its own
special way some special aspect or way of grasping the whole work of God.
In this we are brought to the character of the historical Church as an instrument in the
extension of salvation to men, and also to its character as a sign. And we have brought to
light one of the key ways in which the Church is a sign, namely the way in which the grace of
God bears fruit in a holiness which allows the bringing of human faculties to their right use
and to the achievement of their fulfilment in the act of serving God and making each culture
play its part in this service. This provides a preliminary idea of how important the extension
of the notion of a sacrament or instrumental sign from rites such as baptism and the Eucharist
to the Church itself may be to understanding the place of the Church in the working out of
man's salvation.
Let us rehearse again the stages of the expression of God's determination to relate to man
as to a bodily, social, and historical being. We have mentioned already what was implicit in
allowing the sin of one to affect others, namely a dispensation whereby sin having entered in
all that it should be as a community, not as a set of individuals like the angels, that we should
come to salvation.
But now within this context, as a first mark within our human history of his
determination to enter into history in his own person, accepting an historical position and role
within it in brotherhood with all other human beings, we discover the way God brought into
existence a people peculiarly his own to be the seedbed and herald for his coming. This
people stood as a peculiar sign amongst the peoples of the world, marked out by God's
working for and amongst them, marked out both by their being brought to victories and by
their preservation in execration. Within this people, God prepared a many-aspected set of
teachings and practices to provide a ground of interpretation of his actions when with Jesus'
conception he came in his own person as a man. But before the baptism and ministry of
Jesus, we are led to understand the kingdom of God had not come and we are told, even of
John the Baptist whom Jesus described as the greatest of the prophets, that the least in the
kingdom of God was greater than him. This was the kingdom Jesus was to give to his
disciples.
What new thing was made present with the baptism and ministry of Jesus? We are told
that with this a peculiar gift of the Holy Spirit descended amongst men, and in virtue of his
Passion after his glorification, this gift was extended to his Church, so that at Pentecost the
kingdom of God came with power. It was this gift of the Spirit at Pentecost that constituted
the Church in existence as the body of those joined together in one community vivified by
this Spirit, given multiple and integrated roles by the working of this Spirit.
What are we to say of the Church as something newly constituted, brought into
existence, at Pentecost?
We have explained one aspect of what is involved here, namely the bringing into
existence of the mystical body of Christ as the community stemming historically from the
work of Christ of those who by union with him, incorporation into him, are saved. But now
we have to go further into understanding the instrumental role of this historical outflow from
the work of Christ, the character of the Church as an instrumental sign.
The notion of instrumental sign comes into Catholic theology in connection with the
sacraments which are held to be instruments effecting what they signify and signifying what
they effect.
We can see this idea vividly in the way it enables Aquinas to contrast the ceremonies of
the Old Law with the sacraments instituted by Christ in the Church. He holds that, before the
human working of Christ, exterior things could not be instruments of the giving of grace.
God, revealing himself, rouses faith in response to revealing signs, and this faith includes
faith in the meaning of the things signified in the ceremonies of the Old Law, but it is only
the faith, hope, and love raised in the soul which establish a person in a state of justification;
the ceremonies themselves effect nothing in respect to grace, so that by them no man is made
just and in them there is no action of God using them as instruments to make men just, by
them communicating sanctifying grace.
By contrast, in Christ we have God the Son made man, and in his ministry he by his
external actions caused grace, bringing about an effect not only besides nature but above
nature.
By the external actions of a person, I mean actions of that person which, like speaking,
touching, striking a blow, walking, etc., are bodily—that is, complete human actions
involving the will internal to them, but actions of this kind defined in a way involving the
bodily internal to them (i.e., I do not mean to refer to them as merely physical movements not
involving the will internal to the action). So when I refer to the external actions of Jesus, I
mean, not the physical aspect of these actions considered in isolation in a dualist and
Nestorian way as the physical effects of a supposed prior act of human will caused by an act
of divine will, but personal actions at once divinely voluntary, humanly voluntary, and
bodily, these personal actions considered as wholes.
Now, according to Aquinas, likewise in the sacraments we have external actions of
Christ whereby he, by the instrumentality of external actions, causes grace or justifies. This
establishes a contrast between the sacraments as exterior to us effecting grace in us, and the
ceremonies of the Old Law as not so doing. For this is the significance of saying that the
sacraments not only signify the grace they effect but also do really effect the grace they
signify—not, of course, the sacraments considered as works of the human beings other than
Christ ministering them, since that is not their nature, but the sacraments as what they are,
namely works of Christ in the Church.
The key point here is some difference in role between older rites before or apart from the
Passion of Christ, and the actions of Christ, at once divine and human, in the Church since
then. In some way the elder rites were occasions of the giving of grace in a way which
contrasts with the action of Christ making the newer rites instruments of this giving. In this
way we pass from a religion of the word only to a religion of word and sacrament. But we
have to see the sacraments in context—for the doctrine of the sacraments only makes sense in
the context of an understanding of the nature of the Church, in the context of an
understanding that God intended (in an intention which would not fail) to set up the Church
as a concrete community wherein a multi-aspected salvation fully appropriate to man, leaving
no aspect of man's nature unfulfilled, would in the patience of time be brought to completion.
(Once we see an instrumental role in the sacraments in virtue of the workings of the risen
Christ, the way may also be open to see an instrumental role—albeit not ex opere operato—
in other actions of the Church; e.g., in the reading of scripture and the preaching of the word,
but any such vision of a wider instrumental role in the activities of the Church is contingent
on viewing, not just individual rites, but the Church as such as in its existence and activity a
sacrament or instrumental sign.)
This explanation allows us to see the significance of the first note announced by the
Second Vatican Council in the very first paragraph of its Dogmatic Constitution on the
Church, telling us that “the Church is in Christ as a sacrament or instrumental sign of intimate
union with God and of the unity of all humanity.” It means that the Church as fully
constituted at Pentecost is in Christ so that, in its presence in the world, Christ is present in
such wise as to make it a sacrament or instrumental sign of intimate or personal union with
God—the kind of unity whereby the Holy Spirit enables us to pray “Abba, Father,” thereby
putting us in supernatural community with Jesus who in his own right prayed “Abba, Father,”
praying this in his humanity, and also sacrament or instrumental sign of the unity of all
humanity—by this sacrament (the Church) bringing about the unity of man with man, man of
every kind with man of every kind, as brothers, alongside each other as sons of God,
effecting the extension to others of this unity, and signifying the unity intended beforehand.
And it means that, just as its character as the mystical body of Christ depended absolutely on
Christ's indeed being already actually incarnate, since it was only as being in truth a man that
he can be available to be a member of the Church, man in solidarity with other men in the
Church, as head communicating grace to his brethren, so its character as a sacrament or
instrumental sign depends absolutely upon its character as the vehicle of the working of
Christ as human as well as divine in the Church, and so absolutely had to wait until after
Christ's incarnation, passion and glorification.
However, in order to understand this further, one has to develop the idea contained in the
second main note set forth by the Second Vatican Council on the nature of the Church,
namely the idea of the Church as a spiritual community, as a body. This I shall do in Part II of
this article.

F. Objection based on the traditional teaching that “Outside the Church there is no
salvation”
The saying of St. Cyprian that “outside the Church there is no salvation” has been often
repeated and explained in many ways. While normally those who repeat it have had the
concrete historical Catholic Church in communion with Rome in mind, and been emphasising
the imperative to preach to the “pagans” or “heathen” to the ends of the earth, lest they be
condemned to Hell because of our negligence in taking the Gospel to them, it has nonetheless
always been understood in a much wider way. Thus it has always been accepted that the
prophets and saints of the Old Testament would enter into the same salvation as those who
hear the Gospel after the Apostles. And it has always been held that infants from this
background and infants who, in the Church later, are too young to hear the Gospel will both
be saved, and more recently infants who die through abortion have been considered in the
same light as the unbaptised Holy Innocents in Bethlehem who were killed by Herod.
Moreover, just as God gave grace to the Gentiles Job and Danel in such wise that they might
come into a share in the same salvation, so it has always been allowed that there were no
limits to the number of those to whom God might give grace in this way. Further, varying
allowance has been made for a non-blameworthy “invincible ignorance,” e.g., the peasant
who could not be brought to understand the doctrine being presented to him.
Nonetheless, the decree Cantate Domino of the Council of Florence would appear to be
an embarrassment.
The Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 had affirmed that “there is one universal Church
outside which no one at all is saved,” and Pope Boniface VIII in the Bull Unam Sanctam of
1302 had declared that “there is only, holy, catholic and apostolic Church we are compelled
by faith to believe and hold, … outside of whom there is neither salvation nor remission of
sins. … She represents one mystical body; the head of this body is Christ.” Neither defined
the limits of this Church more closely.
However, in Cantate Domino we are told, using quotations from Fulgentius, that "the
holy Roman Church … firmly believes, professes, and teaches that 'outside the Catholic
Church no one neither pagans nor Jews nor heretics nor schismatics can obtain eternal life ...
unless before the end of life they are received into it.’ For union with the body of the Church
is of so great importance that the sacraments of the Church are helpful to the Church only for
those remaining in it; and fasts, almsgiving, other works of piety, and the exercises of a
militant Christian life bear eternal rewards for them alone. 'And no one can be saved, no
matter how much alms he has given, even if he sheds his blood for the name of Christ, unless
he remains in the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church.’”
This decree of 1442, often described as the “decree for the Jacobites” or “decree for the
Copts,” was passed in the eighth session after the Greek bishops had left because the main
business of the Council, the union decree between Western and Eastern Churches agreed in
the sixth session, was over. Since Cantate Domino was directed towards the Coptic Church in
Egypt, within which it was common custom to circumcise male infants before baptising them
and to circumcise girls as in ancient Egyptian and wider custom, which is why much of the
decree concerns circumcision. The facts that the Greek bishops had already left, that it was
directed towards the Copts rather than universally, and when Pope Eugenius IV subscribed it
he wrote only “Ego Eugenius catholice ecclesie episcopus subscripsi,” whereas by contrast
he subscribed the union decree which was also subscribed by the Greeks with the stronger
formula “Ego Eugenius catholice ecclesie episcopus ita diffiniens subscripsi,”6 have led to
the questioning of its status as possibly infallible. Thus, whereas Heinrich Roos and Joseph
Neuner in 1938 and Karl Rahmer in 1968 register it as infallible, the New Catholic
Encyclopedia (second edition) of 2002, takes the opposite position.
However, although this decree may not be infallible, and may make an inaccurate, or
inadequately qualified, statement on the matters which it concerns, its position in the
historical life of the Church nonetheless leaves us in the position of respecting its intention.
This intention bore not only upon the particular practices of the Coptic Church in regard to
circumcision but also upon the importance for access to the fullness of the means of salvation
of actual entry into the historical Church in unity of faith, worship and obedience to the
legitimate pastors including the pope; and the grave offence against faith in willful
persistence in schism and/or heresy, running the risk of the loss of salvation.
Beyond this, it is difficult to understand how God's mercy and will to save all mankind
can be compatible with an arbitrariness which makes a distinction between those who lived
before Christ's Passion and those who conceived after it, so as to remove from the possibility
of salvation people coming after for reasons altogether independent of any extra defect in
their will, all being within reach of the prayers of those who went before. These would
include, we may anticipate, the prayers of Adam himself, or of mankind from after
repentance from its first fall, inasmuch as Irenaeus regarded it as a heresy to deny the
salvation of Adam. The prayers of mankind from after repentance from its first fall would
include the prayers of Eve inasmuch as the Scripture portrays her in a position of fidelity to
God when it represents her as saying, “I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord” when
she gave birth to Cain (Genesis 4:1). In general, Genesis 3:5 portrays God as well disposed to
mankind, albeit under a new covenant involving struggle, suffering, and death.
The grace whereby mankind from its first fall has been able to return to love of God and
to pray for those who were to come after them was, before the Passion of Christ, a grace
given in anticipation of that Passion, a kind of grace of which the grace of the Immaculate
Conception of Mary was the supreme example. Thus no part of God's gracious plan is
independent of the Paschal Mystery.
How those who die in a state of grace before relationship with Christ in his humanity
make the transition to life in a state of grace in active relationship with Christ in his humanity
6 Joseph Gill, Council of Florence, p. 326, Eugenius IV, p. 152.
is a mystery to us. However, it is clear that such a transition is possible from the belief of the
Church of East and West that the Prophets and the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
whose line includes Joseph, will be found amongst the saints in Heaven. It is noteworthy that
the Church has never doubted the salvation of Joseph, Joachim, Ann, or John the Baptist, and
that it regarded the shrines of the Maccabees in Antioch as Christian shrines (the Discourses
of John Chrysostom evidence this). And St. Paul did not doubt the salvation of just Gentiles
who had gone before, amongst whom he would have envisaged Job and others. Therefore, no
new principle is involved requiring us to insist upon a doctrine of Limbo either for just
pagans or for unbaptised infants. Although it is possible for the Church like St. Augustine to
confess ignorance as to what happiness God has reserved for unbaptised infants, it does not
seem necessary to deny their access to salvation.

II. The Church as a body

In Part I of this article I spoke of the first note announced by the Second Vatican Council
in the very first paragraph of its Constitution on the Church, telling us that “the Church is in
Christ as a sacrament or instrumental sign of intimate union with God and of the unity of all
humanity.” That meant that the Church as fully constituted at Pentecost is in Christ so that, in
its presence in the world, Jesus is present in such wise as to make this Church, present on
earth until he comes again so as to be visible to all, a sacrament or instrumental sign of
intimate or personal union with God.
By Jesus' personal presence and action he gives this Church the kind of unity by which
the Holy Spirit enables us to pray “Abba, Father,” thereby putting us in supernatural
community with Jesus who in his own right prayed “Abba, Father.” This he prayed in his
humanity, and this same community with him makes the Church also the sacrament or
instrumental sign of the unity of all humanity—and by means of this sacrament (the Church)
bringing about the unity of man with man, man of every kind with man of every kind, as
brothers alongside each other as sons of God, effecting the extension to others of this unity,
and signifying the unity intended beforehand.
The nature of the salvation God planned was to be fully human, encompassing the
fulfilment of the potentialities of every human faculty, and realised in a bodily and historical
way. And because of this, the coming into existence of the historical Church as the body of
Christ had to wait until after Christ's historical coming in the flesh, ministry, passion, and
glorification, becoming man in solidarity with all human beings and by this solidarity
opening the way to the salvation of all that are willing to receive it. This historical Church is
fully human, bodily, and historical, and the focus for developing every human faculty in such
a way as also to make it contribute to the enrichment of man's friendship with God and
worship of him. In this way, the Church became the kernel to which all those to whom God
gives grace in anticipation of knowledge of Christ are to be joined and thereby share in the
fuller salvation I have indicated.
In this explanation, I have spoken of the Church as a body, the mystical social body of
Christ. But in applying the term “body” to a social body and the correlative term “member”
to its members, we are using these terms metaphorically, and we have to understand how this
metaphor works.
In order to understand this further, our task is to develop the idea contained in the second
main note set forth by the Second Vatican Council on the nature of the Church, namely the
idea of the Church as a spiritual community, as a body:
"Christ, the one mediator, set up his holy church here on earth as a visible structure
[compago], a community of faith, hope and love; and he sustains it unceasingly and through
it he pours out grace and truth on everyone. However, this society structured [instructa] with
hierarchical organs, on the one hand, and the mystical body of Christ, on the other hand, a
visible assembly and a spiritual community, an earthly church and a church enriched with
heavenly gifts, must not be considered as two things, but as forming one complex reality in
which are coalesced a human and a divine element."
This at once brings us into the context of the metaphor of body applied to the Church.
Considering the Church as a body, vivified by the Holy Spirit, with Jesus as its head
communicating this Spirit to its parts or members, a person will be a member of the Church
in so far as the Holy Spirit is working in this person in his activity of enlivening, giving
diverse gifts and vocations, and integrating and unifying the Church, and in so far as this
person is concretely, historically linked into the body of the Church—for, in order for the
metaphor of a body to have any purchase, it is required that the body as a unity be concretely,
historically realised. Considering the Church in this way, it is at once evident that
incorporation or membership is something which, according to what the metaphor or analogy
of a body absolutely requires, must have aspects and degrees in respect of these aspects.
These aspects are not commensurable: therefore, although a canonist in his legalism may
make out that a lapsed Catholic who is not in heresy or schism is more a member of the
Church than a devout non-Catholic Christian, and although a preacher in his eloquence may
make out that the devout non-Catholic is more a member of the Church than many Catholics,
the truth is that all these are members of the Church in different degrees and aspects but in
incommensurable respects. (And in a realistic perspective, granted the fact that many with
Catholic roots not only do not hold Catholic positions on the real presence in the Eucharist,
on the nature of Christ, on the authority of the Church, on abortion, on contraception, and
many other matters, and are prepared to defend their opinions (which from a Catholic point of
view are irregular opinions) openly, so that it is very obscure whether or not their division
from the Church is private or public, there must be a very real sense in which many non-
Catholics are in certain respects more fully members of the Catholic Church than many so-
called Catholics, while in other respects not so.7)
Within this perspective, all baptised Christians have some membership of the Roman
Catholic Church. It is not possible according to the Roman Catholic understanding for one to
administer baptism in any setting (unless one does it conditionally) without this making the
baptised person ipso facto not only a member of the ecclesial community through whose
ministries God has given him this grace, but also a member of the Catholic Church to which
God has given a particular universal ministry to pope and bishops in communion with him to
serve.
That is, just as membership of the Church has many aspects and degrees, so what we
consider the extent of the compago (company, Christ's holy Church here on earth as a visible,
concrete structure) is different as considered for different purposes or under different aspects.
Thus, from the point of view of the avoidance of disrespectful proselytism and of the
initiation of people into full communion in faith and the sacraments with the Catholic
Church, non-Catholic Christians are outside this compago. Yet, if we view the Church in a
wider way, seeing it as extending as far as the action of the sacraments extends, then all
baptised Christians are part of this compago, and the Eastern Orthodox especially since the
joint annulment of the decrees the excommunication issued in 1054 are peculiarly intimately
parts of this compago, being as it were proximately in full communion in respect of faith and
7It will be found that, in typical cases, the particular heresy or heresies which led to the origination of
separated churches are long dead in many or most of the members of those churches. This is the most typical
situation of adult Christians in separated churches and ecclesial communities.
Both Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox theological commissions have separately come to the view
that the principal monophysite churches are orthodox in their doctrine of Christ, accepting his perfect humanity,
although schismatic in rejecting Chalcedon and its formula of one divine person in two natures. This brings
these monophysite churches, notably the Coptic, all longsuffering in persecution into the closest intimacy, along
with the Eastern Orthodox, with the Roman Catholic Church.
But taking a yet wider view, one has to pay regard to the fact that few theologians and fewer members in
the Reformed churches hold to the doctrine of predestination in its strict Calvinist form and few hold that grace
is purely external to the soul so as to be only imputed. Therefore it can easily happen that many Christians who
are not in full communion with the Church are, though not in full communion, in fuller real koinonia with the
Church than many present day Catholics.
the sacraments. Indeed the way in which, in a key respect, Eastern Orthodox and Roman
Catholic already constitute one visible compago is seen in the provision that, in the absence
of the availability of Catholic provision, Roman Catholics can satisfy the requirement to
attend the Eucharist by participating in the Eastern Orthodox liturgy, and even receive
Communion if this is not to disrespect the discipline of the Eastern Orthodox Church
concerned.
The way in which all baptised Christians are parts of the compago of the Church is
vividly seen in the fact that all baptised Christians who recognise the sacrament for what it is
can receive Holy Communion from Catholic ministers when in danger of death as well as in
certain other special circumstances. (Further, just as catechumens who desire to be members
of the Church and are preparing for baptism are intimately joined to the Church in its most
concrete compago without being yet members of it, so we can say that those in Baptist
churches who are not yet baptised and Quakers who hold Christian belief as expressed in the
Apostles' and Nicene creeds but do not practise baptism are in a parallel way intimately
joined to the Church in its wider compago, so that if they have appropriate faith they are fit
for baptism and, if they believe Communion for what it is, to receive Communion.)
From the Catholic standpoint, the typical situation of Christians in non-Catholic churches
is to be at root members of the one complex reality which is the Roman Catholic Church, but
members separated from it in certain respects. That is, it is not the case that what takes place
amongst non-Catholic Christians happens absolutely outside the Roman Catholic Church,
since the visible concrete structure in which this consists is not to be identified simply with
the collection of people in full and unrestricted communion with the See of Rome. On the
contrary, we are to understand the idea that there are “elements of sanctification and truth”
outside the compago of the Catholic Church steered by the successor of Peter and the bishops
in communion with him, i.e., this compago considered in the strictest of its canonical senses,
are still “gifts proper to the Church of Christ,” so that, in the words of the commission
responsible for drafting the document, “without doubt God uses the separated communities,
clearly not qua separated, but as informed by the aforesaid ecclesial elements” (i.e., having
these elements as their inner principle or moving force). The thought is the same as that of St.
Augustine when in his tract On Baptism he says, “...there is one Church which is alone called
Catholic; and whenever it has anything of its own in these communions of different bodies
which are separate from itself, it is most certainly in virtue of this which is its own present in
each of them that she, not they, has the power of generation.”
But this must not be misunderstood. It is not that these elements and gifts are derived to
these separated communities or to those who err in good faith by derivation from the Church
as such, but as the theological commission insisted, “the validity and efficacy of the many
sacraments and other means of salvation are not able to be impeded by the Church since they
depend not on the will and jurisdiction of the Church but on the salvific will of Christ.” That
is, what is determinative of where what is proper to the Church is present is not the
sociological confines of the Church's compago in its narrowest canonical sense, but is rather
the will and determination of Christ as head of the Church, a will marked by an historical
connection through the sacraments and other means of salvation.
Karl Rahner treated the concept of member of the Church as if it were an all-or-nothing
concept, so that the compago of the church had one unambiguous definition, and in this he
seems to have been in conformity with the thought of Pius XII who in 1943 never speaks of
full or less full membership of the Church but only of real membership. Rahner then explains
how many others, not thus formally members of the Church in some restrictive sense, are
related to or joined to the Church in a way relevant to salvation.
As against this, I say that one must distinguish:
(1) the relationship to the Church of those who, given grace to have faith and
love towards God before the time of Christ's passion or apart from
historical influence in the wake of the work of Christ, are to be joined to the
Church after death in undoubted sharing of the same salvation,
 (2) the being joined to the Church exemplified by those indeed historically
moved by the work of Christ and the Church and waiting for baptism, as a
concretisation of this jointure,
(3) concrete historical membership, having many aspects and degrees, realised
amongst those who are baptised, and
(4) full communion, being joined with Christ in his visible body, to the bindings
of profession of faith, the sacraments and ecclesiastical governance.
That is, I consider it wrong to view the workings of grace amongst non-Catholic Christians as
mere vestiges making possible an external relation to the Church, joining them to it like non-
Christians only by a spiritual bond.
In the point of view I am putting forward, those who are baptised but are not in full
communion of faith and the sacraments with the successor of Peter and bishops in
communion with him are like sons and daughters who have not realised or taken knowledge
of their whole inheritance, extending to the fullness of the means of salvation indefectibly
maintained by God in the Catholic Church. But they have in the meantime some real
membership of the Church, and the ecclesial elements said according to one use of words to
be outside the compago of the Church are never absolutely external to the Church but are
workings of God through the membership of the Church taken in a wider way, workings of
God within the compago of the Church taken more broadly, workings still strictly linked to
the historical workings of the Church as historically mediating the knowledge and grace of
Christ and working through the sacraments so that the workings of the ministries of different
churches are out-workings of this grace whose derivation from Christ is marked by the
sacraments, workings which still participate in the exercise of the Church's role as an
instrumental sign of salvation.

A. Objections from “non-Catholics”

It will be asked whether this view of the Church is simply imperialist, making non-
Catholic churches and ecclesial communities into mere subordinate parts of the Catholic
Church, like limbs towards which the nerve and blood supply have not been cut off but are
defective or impeded by obstacles. This would be the picture if one viewed the services of
these separated churches and communities as having no living present inspiration from God,
so that the Church as an instrumental sign in which God is directly active in a way mediated
by grace-laden historical connection with the incarnation was not present in them, so that
they are only natural historical channels of a grace and witness given before their separation
with no input of grace and spiritual gifts since their separation except in the manner grace and
spiritual gifts are also given to non-Christians not historically mediated ecclesially or
sacramentally. But on the contrary, following the Council, I view non-Catholics and non-
Catholic churches and ecclesial communities as participating in Christ's ecclesial or
sacramental work in the world.
And the unity we are to hope for is not to be thought of in terms of a return of bodies
completely external to the Church to a Church already established in perfection. Rather, non-
Catholic Christians and their churches and ecclesial communities are by the fact of baptism
and other ecclesial links already involved inside the visible structure of the Church in key
respects. And since the whole community of man is in via, and, not only the various non-
Catholic Churches and ecclesial communities not yet in perfection, but also the company of
those in full communion with the See of Rome also by no means yet in perfection, and since
the growth of each and all is impeded by attachments rooted in the sins, mistakes, and delays
in growth or imperfections of the past, it follows that the process of coming together involves
a process of mutual metanoia and mutual learning from one another in a fuller appropriation
of the faith given to the Church, in this way to come to the fullness of concrete unity and
communion. And this whole process of growing together is a part of the Church's coming to
perfection.
 One must ask the question: is there anything which members of non-Catholic Christian
bodies hold about their respective denominations which the Catholic Church denies?
And to this the answer is very often, “No!”
Of course, many of the non-Catholic Christian bodies concerned have things contrary to
what the Catholic Church teaches built into their foundational confessions or statements of
faith. This is true in the case of the original Lutheran and Reformed churches and of the
Church of England in her 39 Articles. However, in the case of most members of Protestant
and Anglican church bodies, one will find that they view most or all of these matters contrary
to Catholic teaching which their denominations formally or originally taught to be matters of
opinion only and it is only to central matters held in common with Catholics and Orthodox
(such as the contents of the Nicene Creed) that they hold to be of faith—that is, if they have
not abandoned belief in the divinity of Christ and the Trinity altogether. And they tend not to
hold their denominations to have anything like the kind of status which the Catholic Church
holds itself to have, and which many Eastern Orthodox hold the Eastern Orthodox Church to
have. That is, they have moved far from the dogmatism of the heretical confessions of faith
set forth by the people who led them into schism—indeed, these foundational statements and
confessions are often not only neglected but even positively spurned by them.
As to the Eastern Orthodox Churches, there is no statement of faith dividing them from
Catholics, and every kind of opinion can be found on the filioque, the chief matter of
doctrinal dispute between the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches. And, within the
Eastern churches, there can even be found some theologians who hold that that it is
impossible for the Eastern Orthodox Church to hold an Ecumenical Council until the schism
is healed so that the pope or his representatives participate, a view which places a reservation
on the sense in which the Eastern Orthodox Church is self-sufficient independent of an
incipient relationship to the Catholic Church.
It remains true that many Orthodox hold to the view of Orthodoxy which differs only
verbally from the equivalence of the mystical body and the Roman Catholic Church. Others
add, in a manner derived from Cyprian, in an opinion which prior to the late 1940s was also
found amongst some Roman Catholic theologians in regard to the Catholic Church, that there
is no sacramental life, not even baptism, outside the juridical borders of Orthodoxy. Many
Lutherans and the Reformed have held that errors about the role and status of the “Word”
(meaning the inspired scriptures and their preaching) un-Church bodies other than their own,
and some Anglicans that only the via media they represent and recommend reflects the
Church of the Fathers, etc. However, many or most of these hold these views as theological
opinions only, as can be inferred from their sharing membership of church bodies within
which many do not share their views, and in any case they tend not to hold them in such a
sense as to deny that orthodox Roman Catholics can be fully Christians.
I say “characteristic” because it is not quite universal. The most important exceptions
apart from the one we have seen in the case of many Eastern Orthodox, are those arising
when questions of the validity of orders are crucial as with High Anglicans. Now it is true
that the principles governing decisions as to validity of orders are doctrinal and liable to
belong to the deposit of faith as it is progressively better understood through true
development. Nonetheless, decisions about particular cases are juridical ones concerning
contingent matters of history later than the period of the laying down of the deposit of faith,
and are in no way part of its sense or implications, and so cannot normally be within the remit
of infallibility (or what a person needs to decide upon prior to entering fuller communion
with the Church). The main exceptions are those juridical decisions which seriously affect the
question of the identity of the Church, e.g., by affecting such questions as whether Trent was
an ecumenical council or whether Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI and his successors were true
popes. The identity of the Church is a question of importance in its own right, but I mention
these last two cases because they affect the question of whether the definition of the
Assumption in 1950 was a true act of the extraordinary magisterium and whether Vatican II
was an ecumenical council.
 However, just as if the Church mistakenly judges a marriage to be invalid and as a result
mistakenly allows a person to contract a second marriage although the person who is in fact
his true wife is still alive, or if it mistakenly judges an ordination to be invalid and mistakenly
administers ordination to the same person a second time, this merely reflects the non-
universal significance of the matters concerned. The question of Anglican orders is perched
between the individual and local and what affects the identity of the Church (e.g., who could
speak with the authority of bishop at an ecumenical council—one may note that the Eastern
Orthodox bishops were invited to the First Vatican Council in 1869-70). The matter would
have seemed more local in the 1500s than it does today, whether because the religion of the
British Empire has become worldwide, or because of change in ecumenical politeness.
Accordingly, with these reservations, we can say that the characteristic situation is that
the Catholic Church holds that the various churches and ministries have all the role which
they say they have in respect of preaching, teaching and bringing up in the faith, supporting,
and assisting their members through word and sacrament towards closer union with God.
Only always it will be found that the Catholic Church believes something about the nature of
the Church and about itself which the non-Catholic does not believe about the Church and a
fortiori does not believe about his own church or denomination.
From the Catholic standpoint, what is involved is that the Catholic believes that God has
given more for man in creating the Church than the non-Catholic believes.
There is often some tension between Catholics and non-Catholics as to whether the
Roman Catholic Church is referred to as the Catholic Church or whether the adjective Roman
should always be added. The apparent carelessness with which Roman Catholics speak
sometimes of the Roman Catholic Church and sometimes of the Catholic Church does not
spring from a disrespect for non-Catholic churches and ecclesial communities but from the
conception which Roman Catholics have of the Church. In their way of thinking, whether
they speak of the Church, or of the Catholic Church, or of the Roman Catholic Church, they
are speaking of the same thing, namely a concrete many-aspected reality instituted by Christ,
so that any of these ways of referring to it are appropriate. By contrast, Christians who are not
Roman Catholics often insist that they are members of Christ's Church. But they mean by this
much less than Roman Catholic doctrine understands, because they do not mean membership
of a concrete historical community established by Christ, community of faith being expressed
in outward profession and sacramental communion, but something only spiritual. As to their
membership of Christ's Church, as we have seen, the Roman Catholic should not dispute
since they do indeed have some real, although incompletely carried through, membership of
the Church, indeed even of the Roman Catholic Church. But the Roman Catholic means by
this something much more, not just spiritual in the sense of immaterial, but something
roundedly human and historically real. Many non-Roman-Catholics express this insistence,
not only by saying indeed correctly that they are members of Christ's Church, but further by
saying that they are indeed Catholics and members of the Catholic Church, a point
characteristically emphasised by Anglicans. But this point is obscured by the way they
represent themselves, by their use of the phrase “the Catholic Church,” not as members of a
single or unified concrete communion with both visible and spiritual aspects, a communion
whose singleness or unity is marked by an unconditional committedness to some historically
identifiable society (e.g., marked by links with successor of Peter), but something still in
essence only spiritual or not thus concrete.

B. Objections from “Catholics”

I come now to the second main note set forth by the Second Vatican Council on the
nature of the Church, and let me quote the whole passage because its interpretation has been
quite disputed:

“Christ, the one mediator, set up his holy church here on earth as a visible structure
[compago], a community of faith, hope and love; and he sustains it unceasingly and through
it he pours out grace and truth on everyone. However, this society structured [instructa] with
hierarchical organs, on the one hand, and the mystical body of Christ, on the other hand, a
visible assembly and a spiritual community, an earthly church and a church enriched with
heavenly gifts, must not be considered as two things, but as forming one complex reality in
which are coalesced a human and a divine element. It is therefore by no mediocre analogy
that it is likened to the mystery of the incarnate Word. For just as the nature taken on serves
the divine Word as a living instrument of salvation inseparably joined with him, in a similar
way the social structure [compago] of the church serves the Spirit of Christ who vivifies the
church towards the growth of the body (cf. Eph 4,16).
“This [feminine, i.e., this holy Church set up here on earth as a visible compago, or this
social compago—or this one complex reality described in the previous paragraph] is the
unique church of Christ, which in the creed we profess to be one, holy, catholic and apostolic.
After his resurrection our saviour gave the church to Peter to feed (cf. Jn 21,17), and to him
and the other apostles he committed the church to be spread and governed (cf. Mt 28,18ff.);
and he set it up for all time as the pillar and foundation of the truth (cf. 1 Tm 3,15). This
church, set up and organised in this world as a society, subsists in the catholic church,
governed by the successor of Peter and the bishops in communion with him, although outside
its structure many elements of sanctification and truth are to be found which, as gifts proper
to the church of Christ, impel towards catholic unity.”

The decision to say not that the Church, one, holy, catholic, and apostolic, the mystical
body of Christ, is the Roman Catholic Church but that it “subsists” in it has been the subject
of much discussion and controversy. In Pius XII's encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi of
1943 we find the statement that the mystical body of Christ “is” the Roman Catholic Church.
Therefore, unsurprisingly, the council has been interpreted as withdrawing from the assertion
of identity, which would seem to represent not just a development of Catholic teaching but a
change. However, on examination this does not seem to be the situation. One may note in this
context that in Vatican II's Decree in the Oriental Churches, that is the churches of eastern
rite which are in communion with Rome, we read “the holy and catholic church, which is the
mystical body of Christ, consists of the faithful who are organically united in the Holy Spirit
by the same faith, by the same sacraments and by the same government, and who growing
together and various hierarchically linked groups make up the various particular churches or
rites” referring to the visible Church.
We have already seen that when the expression “the mystical body of Christ” is used in
the theology of earlier centuries, its purpose is not to introduce a notion of the Church as an
invisible community to be contrasted with the visible society commonly spoken of as the
Church, but primarily to distinguish the natural physical or biological body of Christ from the
Church spoken of as the body of Christ according to a metaphor, the word “mystical” coming
to us from mediaeval use, carrying the extra suggestions of a spiritual dimension to the social
body spoken of and of this spiritually energised body being an object of faith because thus
possessed of this secret unseen dimension. Therefore, the significance of the word “mystical”
in this context is not at all to suggest that what is being spoken of is something like a soul, a
non-bodily reality, realised in this or that different social reality. Accordingly, the idea that
the Church professed in the creeds is some sort of non-bodily reality subsisting in the Roman
Catholic Church but also possibly subsisting in other churches seem to be misconstructions of
the intentions of the Vatican Council. On the contrary, their intention when they insisted that
the visible structure and the spiritual community constituted one complex reality seems to
have been precisely to exclude such a disjoining of the invisible and the visible, the spiritual
and the concrete.
Rather the point seems to be that when we speak of the Church, even when we speak of
the Roman Catholic Church, we can be speaking in either of two different ways: either
speaking of the Church as the whole single complex reality comprising both spiritual and
concrete aspects, or, abstracting one aspect of this complex reality, speaking of the Church
solely under its visible concrete aspect, determining this according to different criteria
according to different purposes in the way that we will make clearer later. In the first
paragraph we are presented with the picture of one complex reality comprising a human and
divine element, the visible social compago of the Church being vivified by the Spirit. In this,
the Council had the same purpose as Rahner represents Pius Xll as having had in his
encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi in 1943, namely that of preventing the understanding of
the mystical body or the Church of the creeds as a purely spiritual reality rather than
something with a real embodiment in the world, namely the Catholic Church.
Against this background, the natural way of reading the next paragraph is as meaning
that this one complex reality, which is the Church we profess in the creeds as one, holy,
catholic, and apostolic, subsists in the Catholic Church steered by the successor of Peter and
bishops in communion with him. That is, the natural way of reading the Vatican document is
as meaning that this one complex reality subsists in the Catholic Church in its aspect as a
visible social compago, that is an interlinked social whole.
Therefore, rather than concentrating on the obscurities of the word “subsists,” it seems
better to draw attention to what is involved in considering the Church in which we profess
faith in the creeds, not just as a visible concrete structure (which indeed under the aspect of a
visible concrete structure empirically described is not as such the object of faith), but as the
one complex reality spoken of, the reality which comprises at once a human and divine
element, is at once a visible society structured with hierarchical organs and a spiritual
community enriched with heavenly gifts. And what is involved here is exhibited most
dramatically and in a most clarifying way by considering the concept of “member of the
Church.”
We ordinarily tend to consider the concept of “member” in a purely sociological way.
We take account of initiation ceremonies, the signing of pieces of paper, the taking of oaths,
marking out a person as subject to new rights and obligations by being definitively removed
from a class of non-members of a group and placed within the class of members subject to
these rights and obligations. But the whole thesis of this paper has been that, while this
organisational conception of member has some relevance to the identification of those in full
communion with the Church (although even then leaving some obscurities) since it is the
nature of the Church to have a concretely identifiable realisation, this organisational notion of
member is not the notion of member which is immediately correlative to the general notion of
the Church as the body of Christ, which suggests many aspects and degrees in respect of
realisation of membership in the way explained earlier. I append some details of the situation
in canon law and the obscurities which it leaves, of a kind any human law is liable to leave.

III. Appendix: Some observations on the situation in canon law

If we follow a sociological approach to membership of the Catholic Church, guided by

canon law we meet with a certain inevitable arbitrariness. Thus any Christian child who is
baptised in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, in the setting of whatever
community (or even outside a community by a non-Christian moved to do this), is thereby
ipso facto made a member of the Catholic Church. When a child is, for instance, with the
intention of baptising baptised in a Methodist Church, he is thereby ipso facto made not only
a member of the Methodist Church but also of the Roman Catholic Church. This was
reflected in the fact, for instance, that, in practice guided by the 1917 Code of Canon Law, if
that child came into the practice and teaching of the Roman Catholic Church before the age
of 14, there would be no question of his being required to be received into the Roman
Catholic Church before being in full communion with other Roman Catholics; rather he
would then be just as much in full membership of the Roman Catholic Church as others—
more recently, if the transfer of the center of commitment, practice, and teaching arises after
the age of reason (deemed to be 7), what is required varies somewhat according to the way
the local bishop or other ordinary regulates the application of RCIA. And although if he or
she is already 14 when baptised or continues after 14 in adherence to the Methodist Church,
he will need to pass through a ceremony of reception as an element in a rite of initiation into
the Catholic Church, it remains that the fact of having been baptised in whatever ecclesial
context will constitute a bar to any exercise of the Pauline privilege whereby a person who
marries a non-Christian before being baptised can in certain circumstances have the marriage
annulled and marry again. (These remarks are not affected by the canons 852 and 863 of the
more recent code, since these remarks have to do with the conditions of the administration of
baptism and not to the already validly baptised.)
These facts suffice to show that even in the vantage point of sociology and law the
notion of member has some arbitrariness and obscurity. In the new Roman Catholic Code of
Canon Law the concept of membership appears mainly in one context, namely that of
determining whether a person is a member of one ritual church or another, e.g., a member of
the so-called Latin Church (now using Latin only rarely except in official documents) or of
this or that oriental church using Greek, Old Slavonic, or other ritual and following different
customs. But this is a question of membership of ritual churches within the full communion
of the Roman Catholic Church.
The main canons bearing upon the question of membership, not of a ritual church, but of
the Roman Catholic Church as such, are canons not using the word “member” itself, which
read as follows:

A. Canon 204
(1) Christ’s faithful are those who, since they are incorporated into Christ through
baptism, are constituted the people of God. For this reason they participate in their own way
in the priestly, prophetic, and kingly office of Christ. They are called, each according to his or
her particular condition, to exercise the mission which God entrusted to the Church to fulfill
in the world.
(2) This Church, established and ordered in this world as a society, subsists in the
Catholic Church, governed by the successor of Peter and the bishops in communion with him.

B. Canon 205
Those baptised are in full communion with the Catholic Church here on earth who are
joined with Christ in his visible body, through the bonds of profession of faith, the
sacraments and ecclesiastical governance.

C. Canon 206
(1) Catechumens are linked with the Church in a special way since, moved by the
Holy Spirit, they are expressing an explicit desire to be incorporated in the Church. By this
very desire, as well as by the life of faith, hope and charity which they lead, they are joined to
the Church which already cherishes them as its own.
(2) The Church has a special care for catechumens. While it invites them to lead an
evangelical life, and introduces them to the celebration of the sacred rites, it already accords
them various prerogatives which are proper to Christians.

It is notable that these canons do not use the word “member” but speak of
“incorporation,” an incorporation into Christ by baptism which is at the same time an
incorporation into the Church. In this they show a correct instinct, namely that in Christian
theology the notion of “member” in respect of the relation between the Christian and the
Church should only be understood correlatively with the notion of the Church as the “body of
Christ”.
Arising out of these, we find certain other canons which do use the word “member” but
only in ways which accord with the general perspectives set forth in canons 204 to 206. Thus,
in 751 we find that “Schism is the withdrawal of submission to the Supreme Pontiff or from
communion with the members of the Church subject to him,” evidently referring primarily to
an action, and only incidentally having implications as to lack of full communion in the case
of the progeny of such schismatic act. Canon 774 tells us that “The care for catechesis, under
the direction of lawful ecclesiastical authority, extends to all members of the Church, to each
according to his or her role.” This can properly be interpreted as also implying a
responsibility extending to those in partial communion with the Church according to the way
they are related to it, e.g., by attendance or partial adherence, friendship, community of
concern stemming from the same roots in baptism, the scriptures or tradition, and so forth.
Canon 834 tells us that “Through the liturgy a complete public worship is offered to God by
the head and members of the mystical body of Christ,” and here it is even more plain that this
worship of the liturgy is offered by the head [Christ] and members in such sense that all those
with incomplete communion with the Church or partial membership also enter in according
to the manner and degree of their membership—according, that is, to the way in which the
Holy Spirit acts in them to join them in this communal offering.