AmericanPapist Comments
I remember from Documents of Vatican II class how this ended up being the most important sentence in Lumen Gentium.
Praise God. I've gotten in trouble with people on both the "right" and the "left" of the Faith for defending this phrase, in the proper context. It's about time.
In spite of liberal twisting of the meaning of "subsists" I have continued to love and use those beautiful words: "THE One, Holy, Catholic, And Apostolic Church."
This will be another among several documents clarifying this phrase. The issue of the meaning of those words was - in more or less detail - discussed in the Declaration Mysterium Ecclesiae, of the CDF, in the Declaration Dominus Iesus, also of the CDF, on the Declaration Commuionis Notio, also of the CDF, etc.
I wonder what - if any - impact this will have on relations with the Orthodox, considering that to the Orthodox churches ALONE does the Catholic Church apply the term "sister church".
I believe that Protestantism has really run its intellectual course. I am glad that Pope Benedict and the CDF are committed to upholding the truth without admixture or confusion in order to invite our separated bretheren into full communion with apostolic Christianity.
In ICXC,
Gordo
I think the confusion is just that people can't understand/don't know the difference between "subsists in" and "subsists on".
"Subsists on" means "to be nourished by, to draw one's life from."
Drawing from this familiar phrase, people conjured up the image of the Catholic Church as a sort of "Christianity Central", the Heart, maybe, of a wider Church. We are the Great, Old Church, surrounded by other Churches which have their own validity. How many times have I heard Catholics, even priests, talk about "the Church in the wider sense" meaning just this.
"Subsists in" however, simply means "to exist in the form of". The Catholic Church is the Body of Christ. The Body of Christ exists in the form of the Catholic Church. If you're looking for the Body of Christ, you gotta go to the Catholic Church. No OTHER body is the form of Christ's Body.
But that does not mean that other's may not be joined to that one body in certain less that ideal ways. This is a fruit of God's mercy and the grace of baptism. But everyone who is baptized in baptized into the Catholic Church. There are no other Churches to be baptized into.
As far as Gordo's question goes, the Orthodox Churches are sister Churches in the sense that the are autonomous bodies which have certain marks of the Catholic Church, apostolicity and the Sacraments, etc.
They are not rival bodies, then, but true organic ecclesial bodies or particular manifestations of the whole body--not just individuals as is the case with Protestants--which are joined to a greater or lesser degree, depending on your eccesiology, with the Catholic Church.
I think all this is fairly basic and it's a shame in a way that a document has to be issued explaining it. But it's good, too. It'll be a help to the recovery of a genuinely Catholic ecclesiology, but one which makes room for a genuine and generous ecumenism, too.
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