Dr. Eugene R. Schlesinger (PhD Marquette University) is Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Santa Clara University. He is an Episcopalian engaged in Catholic systematic theology, beginning from the intersection of ecclesiology and sacramental theology. He currently serves on the Episcopal Church’s Standing Commission on Ecumenical and Interreligious Relations. He has authored several books, most recently Ruptured Bodies: A Theology of the Church Divided (Fortress, 2024) and Salvation in Henri de Lubac: Divine Grace, Human Nature, and the Mystery of the Cross (University of Notre Dame, 2023).
The Catholic Church came late to the ecumenical movement, but its entry was decisive and irreversible. The Second Vatican Council’s Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio (UR) was issued after decades of hesitation about Catholic involvement in ecumenical endeavor.1 While such unofficial dialogues as the Groupe de Dombes had benefited from Catholic participation, by and large, the movement was viewed with suspicion and held at a distance, with Catholics prohibited from participation in official dialogues. Yves Congar’s seminal 1937 text Chretiennes desunis,2 while genuinely breaking new ground in terms of urging Catholics to take their non-Catholic fellow Christians seriously as Christians, maintains a paradigm of return ecumenism in its outlook. And nevertheless, it was viewed as avant-garde, perhaps even a bridge too far. And so, for UR to essentially repudiate return ecumenism is a rather striking development.
To move from Pope Pius XI’s 1928 Encyclical Mortalium Animos, with its insistence that “the union of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it,”3 to UR’s affirmations that all who have been justified by faith in baptism are members of Christ’s body… [and that] the significant elements and endowments which together go to build up and give life to the church itself, can exist outside the visible boundaries of the catholic church… [and that non-Catholic Christians] celebrate many sacred actions of the Christian religion. These most certainly can truly engender a life of grace… and must be held capable of giving access to that communion in which is salvation (§3 [Tanner, 2:910]), is indeed a considerable and decisive shift in the church’s outlook. Christians not in full communion with the See of Rome are no longer regarded simply as heretical enemies of the faith, but as “separated [siblings]” (e.g., UR, §1, 3, 4 [Tanner, 2:908, 911–12; my modification.). And while I shall principally be arguing that UR’s promise remains unfulfilled, with subsequent magisterial interventions attempting to walk back its advances, it is only fair to note that this much, at least, has been received as a permanent and irreversible achievement.
That said, though, it remains the case that forward progress since Vatican II has been far from linear, and that it very rarely approaches the highwater mark of the Decree on Ecumenism. What should have been the foundation has become more the ceiling than anything else. Because ecclesiology and ecumenism never proceed from nowhere, I note at the outset my own location and commitments. I am a member of the Episcopal Church, though my principal commitments and interlocutors are very much Catholic. These two facets of my identity and vocation decisively shape how I read UR and how I assess its uneven reception and continued promise.
The chief matter upon which I focus is the Catholic Church’s willingness to recognize the authenticity and integrity of the other Christian churches. I regard this as a sine qua non of ecumenical progress. If the Catholic Church’s ecumenical partners can only be regarded as sub-ecclesial, if our footing can only be subservient to the Catholic Church’s, then the only option really left is an ecumenism of return, even if the Catholic Church understands itself to have changed course from that viewpoint.
I am focused principally on Western churches that are not in communion with Rome, because considerable progress has been made in Catholic affirmations of the integrity and authenticity of the Eastern churches. As far as the latest articulation from the magisterium (the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s 2000 Decree Dominus Iesus) is concerned, the Eastern churches can be regarded as churches in the proper sense of the word, while others are merely “ecclesial communities,” but not actual churches.4 This outlook was reinforced when Pope Benedict XVI issued his Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus, which formed personal ordinariates for disaffected Anglicans to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church, including provision for Anglican priests to become Catholic priests. This provision, though, came at the cost of reordination, as Anglican orders are still officially regarded as “absolutely null and utterly void.”5 While this does not mean that the now-reordained priests’ former ministries must be regarded as merely illusory, it does involve the judgment that the churches of the Anglican Communion are not truly churches, as they lack valid ministries.
To ascertain how Dominus Iesus and the ordinariates represent ecumenical regression, a bit more historical context is in order.6 Earlier, I mentioned Pius XI’s Mortalium Animos, whose outlook was more or less shared by his successor, Pius XII, who in 1943 wrote of the “true Church of Jesus Christ – which is the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church.”7 This statement expresses a relationship of identity, exclusivity, and restriction between the designation church and Roman Catholicism, thereby apparently even excluding the Eastern Catholic Churches, who, while in full communion with the Catholic Church, are not Roman.
By the time of Vatican II, there was a general, but not universal, agreement that such an exclusive and identical predication was now untenable. The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, went through several drafts and revisions, attempting to articulate the proper conception, from the simple est (is) to adest (is present in), to its final wording, that the church of Jesus Christ subsistit in (subsists in) the Catholic Church. While the interpretive history of this change is sometimes contested, the general consensus is that this terminological transition is meant to articulate a particular, even unique relationship between the church and the Catholic Church, while also not making the relationship one of exclusivity or mere identity. In other words, the council fathers sought to thread a needle whereby the Catholic Church could maintain its self-understanding of having a unique role, to be church in even perhaps a preeminent way, while also leaving open the possibility that other churches exist.
UR continued and even deepened this trajectory, at once affirming a unique status for the Catholic Church as that communion in which the one church of Jesus Christ subsists, while also explicitly acknowledging the existence of other churches. In particular, the decree names the Orthodox churches as truly churches, noting that they have followed their own historical courses, developed their own customs and modes of expression, but also gives witness to the same apostolic faith (UR, §14–18). Beyond this, though, UR attends to those “churches and ecclesial communities” in the West that have separated from the Catholic Church” (UR, §19), going so far as to state that Catholic traditions and institutions “partially subsist” in them, and acknowledging a particular prominence to the Anglican Communion in this regard (UR, §13).8
I raise this point in particular, because as we have seen, Dominus Iesus endeavors to read the Council as if only the Catholic Church is fully church (with a perhaps grudging recognition for the Orthodox),9 while all other Christian groupings are to be regarded not as churches, properly speaking, but as mere ecclesial communities. This position falters in two ways. First, it misapplies the category of “ecclesial communities,” as if this phrase were meant to exclude such communities from the designation “church” or to make a negative pronouncement upon their status. In reality, the phrase “ecclesial community” was meant to be inclusive, acknowledging that there are certain communities (such as the Salvation Army), who do not self-designate as churches, or larger groupings of communities that do consider themselves to be churches, but for whom the larger group is not itself a church (such as the Anglican Communion or the Lutheran World Federation).10 So, while the distinction may have a certain utility in recognizing that some communities more closely approximate the ecclesial ideal than others, a rigid reading wherein “ecclesial community” = “not truly a church” is contrary to conciliar intent. Second, though, even if we accepted such a reading of “ecclesial communities,” the position of Dominus Iesus fails to reckon with the Council’s affirmation that there are separated churches in the West. While the council does not go so far as to specify which separated Western communions it regards as churches (even its affirmation of a special place for the Anglican Communion does not make an explicit designation that its member bodies are churches), it is clear that the intent was, at the very least, not to foreclose the question, and even to anticipate a positive answer to the question of whether there are churches, properly speaking, beyond the Catholic and Orthodox churches.
When seen in this light, Dominus Iesus represents something of a failure of nerve on the part of the Catholic magisterium in the face of the generous ecumenical vision charted by UR. In this regard, it is important to note that the Congregation (now Dicastery) for the Doctrine of the Faith’s decree, while expressive of contemporary Catholic policy as regards ecclesial recognition, is not a definitive statement. According to Catholic teaching, doctrines can be taught definitively by ecumenical councils, by the Pope speaking ex cathedra, or by the “ordinary universal magisterium” (that is, when all the bishops in their ordinary teaching hold a particular position as definitively taught – a mechanism that is rather difficult to assess when faced with a controverted question such as this, for how are we to measure it?). Thus, while a dicastery like the DDF has the prerogative of issuing authoritative teaching, it cannot issue definitive teaching. All that to say, while Dominus Iesus is the latest word on the matter, it is not a definitive word, nor a final word. It is open for revision. And, given the rather more generous posture of UR, the teaching of an ecumenical council – albeit a council that determined not to teach definitively – we can hope that this teaching will be revised, and revised in a manner that more closely hews to the Council’s vision.
In the end, to the extent that the Catholic Church is unable to recognize its ecumenical partners as churches, properly speaking, its ecumenical overtures will be forever stultified, because they cannot but proceed on the assumption that the separated siblings will have to self-repudiate, at least in some measure, in order to find common ground with the Catholic Church. A unity that comes at the cost of admitting that we are not really churches after all, will, in the end, just be a repristinated ecumenism of return, even if it goes by another name.
As an Anglican, I have no qualms about the Catholic Church’s self-understanding as that communion in which the one church of Jesus subsists, and this for three related reasons. First, I believe that ecumenism can only possibly proceed on a terrain wherein all parties’ self-understandings are honored, and no one is expected to self-repudiate for the sake of the ecumenical task. So, just as I believe it to be a non-starter to expect Anglicans to surrender our experience and understanding of ourselves as authentically church, I find myself bound to extend that same courtesy to other churches, even as I wish that the favor were returned.
Second, and relatedly, the Catholic Church is unique in expressing this self-understanding. No other church makes such claims. And, while this could be read as hubris, the consideration I just mentioned points in a different direction. The Catholic Church claims this position for itself; no one else does; therefore the Catholic claim does not undermine anyone else’s self-understanding. It is only when Catholics claim that the rest of us are not truly church that they overstep their prerogatives. And, as we have seen, there is a way of understanding the subsistit in that is fully in concert with this, a reading which I think has the greatest textual and contextual support behind it. It takes nothing from me or my church to grant the Catholic Church this position that they claim.
Finally, the confession that the church subsists somewhere strikes me as a rather vital contribution to ecumenical ecclesiology. By and large the Christian churches are united in the understanding that the church is a visible reality, and that, while there is more to the church than its visible elements, an invisible church is a contradiction in terms. And yet, if we stop there, we find ourselves in a bind. My own tradition’s greatest ecumenical achievement, the 1920 Lambeth Conference’s “Appeal to All Christian People” bears this out strikingly. In that document, the bishops of the Anglican Communion boldly and clearly articulate their vision of the church as the union of all the baptized with one another and with Christ, and that it Is God’s purpose to manifest this fellowship, so far as this world Is concerned, In an outward, visible, and united society, holding one faith, having its own recognized officers, using God-given means of grace, and inspiring all its members to the world-wide service of the Kingdom of God. This is what we mean by the Catholic Church.11
And yet, having articulated commitment to this ideal, the bishops go on to observe “this united fellowship is not visible in the world today.”12 With this statement, the Lambeth Conference, perhaps without realizing it, indicates the impossibility of achieving its own ideals with its own conceptual resources. Anglicans have, classically, understood ourselves to be true participants in Christ’s one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church, while also recognizing that we are far from alone in that participation, that we are marked by a certain provisionality and incompleteness apart from our sibling churches. This is well and good, but without being able to affirm that the church subsists somewhere, we find ourselves reverting to an only aspirationally visible ecclesiology, while our actual ecclesiology remains invisibilist. If the subsistit in is true, though, then we are able to hold all these tensions together: there is somewhere that the church can be found in visible integrity, but without thereby excluding other claimants from the title church. At its best, the Catholic Church has this to offer the other churches of the oikoumenē. And yet, as we have seen, it finds itself hard pressed to truly proffer it, tending to revert to a more exclusionary stance.
The Vatican II documents recognize a certain incompleteness for the Catholic Church, noting not just that “many elements of truth and sanctification” are found outside its bounds, but that church divisions can serve to occlude the beauty of catholicity.13 UR takes this realization even further, noting:
The divisions among Christians prevent the church from realizing in practice the fullness of catholicity proper to her, in those of her [children] who, though attached to her by baptism, are yet separated from full communion with her. Furthermore, the church herself finds it more difficult to express in actual life her full catholicity in all its bearings. (UR, no. 4 [Tanner, 2:912; My modification]) Hence, even as the one church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church, it is held back from a full realization and expression of this subsistent catholicity so long as its communion does not fully include all those who are Christ’s own.
Even more pointedly, John Paul II famously spoke of the Catholic Church’s position, so long as it remained divided from the Orthodox, as breathing with only one lung.14 Thus, even with the affirmation of integrity granted by the subsistit in, there remains a recognition of incompleteness, provisionalilty, and need for the full complement of Christians.
The subsistit in means that the Catholic Church lacks nothing it needs to be the community of salvation, the church of Jesus, but it does not mean that the Catholic Church needs nothing from its sibling churches. As Sandra Arenas has shown in a thorough and compelling study of the conciliar teaching, the subsistit in places the Catholic Church in a penultimate position, with the one church of Jesus in the ultimate position.15 And yet, when it comes down to brass tacks, it often seems as though Catholic ecumenical practice shies away from the council’s relativizing vision, to renewed assertions of ultimacy. Here I refer not to the work done by ecumenists in their dialogues with other churches, but to the tepid reception of the dialogues by the church’s hierarchy, and to the ongoing policy of non-recognition of ecumenical partners as authentically churches.
All the building blocks for a compelling and fruitful ecumenism, which upholds Catholic principles and surrenders nothing of the Catholic Church’s self-understanding, even as it recognizes the integrity of other churches and their experiences and understandings of themselves as church, are present in UR. They have been with us for some sixty years now. To paraphrase G. K. Chesterton, it strikes me that the problem is not the ecumenical vision of Unitatis Redintegratio has been tried and found wanting, but rather that it has been found difficult and so not really tried. Let us hope that now, finally six decades later, the Catholic hierarchy will finally be willing to give it a try.
Notes
1 Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio (November 21, 1964). Hereafter cited parenthetically as UR. All quotations from Vatican II documents are fromNorman Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 908–20.
2 English translation: Yves Congar, Divided Christendom: A Catholic Study of the Problem of Reunion, trans. M. A. Bousfield (London: Centenary Press, 1939).
3 Pius XI, “Mortalium Animos,” §10 (Vatican Website, January 6, 1928: https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19280106_mortalium-animos.html).
4 Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, Dominus Iesus, §17 (Vatican Website, August 6, 2000: https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20000806_dominus-iesus_en.html). Since the promulgation of Dominus Iesus, the CDF has been renamed the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. In what follows, I shall use the present designation, even when referring to the dicastery before its renaming.
5 Benedict XVI, Anglicanorum Coetibus: Providing for Personal Ordinariates for Anglicans Entering into Full Communion with the Catholic Church (Vatican Website, November 4, 2009: https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_ben-xvi_apc_20091104_anglicanorum-coetibus.html). For the negative judgment on Anglican ordinations, see Leo XIII, Apostolicae Curae, in Christopher Hill, Edward Yarnold, and Catholic Church, eds., Anglican Orders: The Documents in the Debate (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 1997), 259–79.
6 In fairness, I must note that the ordinariates are not intended as ecumenical overtures at all, but rather pastoral accommodations. This is signaled by their falling under the auspices of the DDF, rather than the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity. Nevertheless, I still regard its assessment of Anglican churches as a regression.
7 Pope Pius XII, Mystici Corporis Christi, §13 (Vatican Website, June 29, 1943: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_29061943_mystici-corporis-christi_en.html).
8 While I do not make too much of the use of “subsist” language (ex parte subsistere pergunt) in this connection, I do think it serves to establish that the conciliar intent in the subsistit in was not to establish a hardened metaphysical attribution, as if the word was not intended to expand the range of possibilities for ecclesial recognition.
9 Dominus Iesus, §17.
10 I am here particularly dependent upon Otto Hermann Pesch, Second Vatican Council: Prehistory – Event – Results – Posthistory, trans. Deirdre Dempsey (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2014); Otto Hermann Pesch, Ecumenical Potential of the Second Vatican Council (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2006).
11 1920 Lambeth Conference, “Appeal to All Christian People,” I [in Randall Thomas Davidson and Honor Thomas, eds., The Six Lambeth Conferences, 1867-1920 (London: SPCK, 1929), 27.
12 1920 Lambeth Conference, “Appeal,” II [Six Lambeth Conferences, 27].
13 Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium (November 21, 1964), nos. 8, 15 [Tanner, 2:854, 860–61].
14 John Paul II, “Ut Unum Sint: On Commitment to Ecumenism” (Vatican Website, May 25, 1995), no. 54, http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_25051995_ut-unum-sint.html.
15 Sandra Arenas, Fading Frontiers? A Historical-Theological Investigation into the Notion of the “Elementa Ecclesiae,” Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium, CCCXXI (Leuven: Peeters, 2021).