Radio Replies Vol 5 - Catholic Apologetics Online

The Church has the duty as far as possible to preserve the freedom of her people from errors in matters of faith and morals; and, as Bishop Ahr, of Trenton, New Jersey, U.S.A., remarked at the time of the Vatican Council: "After error has been printed, it is too late to prevent a great deal of harm. Far better to see that it is not started on its path." Much is made of interpreting the mind of Pope John XXIII. Yet in an address, November 18, 1959, to a "Conference of Ecclesiastical Censors," Pope John XXIII said: "The mission you carry out is of the highest value because you participate in the solicitude of the Church in guiding and instructing her own children in the knowledge of truth and in shielding them from error. Our predecessor, Pius XII, in February, 1956, had already said: 'In each of you we recognise a worthy and faithful co-operator in our pastoral ministry.' These words should tell you that you should be valuable instruments and faithful collaborators with the ecclesiastical authorities in the service of truth, safeguarding the patrimony of the Faith and Morals which must be handed down intact to future generations."

What was technically called the "Index of Forbidden Books" - now no longer in force as such - was really only a minor item among the measures adopted by the Church in fulfilment of her duty throughout the centuries as guardian of the integrity of Christian faith and morals. The earliest example of the Church's attitude towards anti-Christian literature is recorded in Acts, 19:19, where we are told of the spontaneous gesture of St. Paul's converts who voluntarily burned their pagan books publicly - so many that their value in money was computed at "fifty thousand pieces of silver." The first official condemnation of a book occurred at the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D., when the work "Thalia" by the heretic Arius was condemned as containing false doctrines. The first brief list of condemned books was issued by Pope Innocent I, in 405 A.D. As may well be imagined, the invention of the printing press in 1450 A.D. resulted in a multiplication of books which made it impossible to keep track of them all individually. In 1564, therefore, the Council of Trent preferred to give general rules covering classes of books forbidden, the actual "Index" merely listing a comparatively few particular books to which the general rules applied. During the four centuries since the Council of Trent the titles of other books were added from time to time, these being mostly technical works on biblical, philosophical or theological subjects although some were included as calculated to undermine morals. The books listed as condemned were written in various languages, Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, German etc., most of them being of interest only in their country of origin. The "Index" itself, published in Latin, was a kind of record for purposes of consultation rather than for general diffusion. Of its very nature, the greater part of it would be of no practical use in all countries. What was of importance for all countries and for the instruction of Catholics everywhere by their pastors were the general classes of books forbidden to Catholics, and these classifications were included both in the introduction to the "Index" and also in the Code of Canon Law. On December 7, 1965, just before the closing of the Second Vatican Council, Pope Paul VI established the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith to replace the former Congregation of Holy Office, and the official "Index of Forbidden Books", which had been under the control of the Holy Office, lapsed together with that institution. The new Doctrinal Congregation, under the Presidency of Cardinal Seper, said that it would henceforth be a matter for bishops in their own dioceses to supervise books published in their own areas and, if necessary, to censure and condemn them. Despite such decentralisation, however, the Doctrinal Congregation reserved to itself the right in particular cases to prohibit books offending against faith or morals when such works were brought to its attention, although it will not do this until the author has been permitted to state his own case fairly and has refused to make alterations still considered necessary. Adverse decisions of the Congregation, if any, will be published in the interests of the faithful.

We exclude those with an official duty to check doubtful books. The Church therefore declares that all unnecessary reading (or listening to or seeing in these days of radio and films) with a definite sense of danger to one's faith or morals is clearly opposed to the manifested Will of God. Holy Scripture itself warns that he who loves the danger will perish therein (Ecclus., 3:27). Our Lord bade us pray: "Lead us not into temptation." Deliberately exposing oneself to influences calculated to undermine one's faith or morals ranks as voluntarily entering into an occasion of sin. St. John warns us as regards faith: "If any man come to you and brings not this doctrine, receive him not into your house." 2 Jn., 10. That certainly forbids the reception into our minds of the teachings of those who are bent on destroying our Christian convictions. As for morals, thoughts prepare the way for conduct, and what one thinks is conditioned to a great extent by what one reads. St. Paul wrote to the Philippians: "Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever modest, whatsoever just, whatsoever holy, whatsoever of good repute . . . think on those things" (Phil., 4:8). To the Ephesians he wrote, saying of immorality, obscenity and scurrility: "Let not such things be so much as named among you . . . for because of those things comes the anger of God upon the children of unbelief" (Eph., 5:4-6). The law of the Catholic Church still declares prohibited for all Catholics books known to be written for the express purpose of attacking the Catholic religion, or books which every normal Christian judgment would regard as immoral and obscene. We cannot expect the censorship laws of modern secularised States to coincide with those of the Catholic Church in this matter. Secular States have no sense of mission to uphold the Christian religion nor to interest themselves in the salvation of souls; and in the permissive societies secular governments tolerate Catholics cannot accept everything that others around them may regard as permissible. In matters of faith and morals they are obliged to be true to their own consciences, formed under the guidance of the authoritative teachings and rulings of the Catholic Church, the ultimate purposes of which are, not to curtail the freedom of her members, but to preserve for them that true spiritual freedom from evil "wherewith Christ has made us free." (Gal., 4:31).

Never, to my knowledge. He has been misrepresented in various ways on this matter of freedom. In 1933, when Hitler came to power in Germany, Einstein as a Jew took refuge in the United States. From there, in 1940, he sent an article to the French newspaper "L'Ere Nouvelle" in which he said that as a "lover of freedom" he had to admit that when the revolution came in Germany "only the Church (TEglise') had protested against the Hitlerian onslaught on liberty." To French readers "l'Eglise" could mean only the Church with which they were familiar, the Catholic Church, and when that translation appeared in English papers Einstein had to correct it, saying that he had spoken only of "the Church", not of "the Catholic Church", and that he had in mind the Protestant Confessional Churches, as represented by the Lutheran Pastor Niemoller. In view of his express declaration, it must be admitted that those who in all sincerity have quoted his words as a tribute to the Catholic Church have done so mistakenly. It must be noted, however, that Einstein was dealing with the question of freedom as a principle in the civil order, the obligation of States to grant freedom to all citizens, with no totalitarian oppression or denial of their fundamental rights as human beings. He was not concerned with the religious disciplinary authority prevailing in any of the Churches to which any groups of citizens might choose to belong. He would have admired, equally with that of Pastor Niemoller, the courageous protests against Nazi tyranny in Germany from such Catholic leaders as Cardinal Faulhaber of Munich, Bishop Galen of Munster, and Bishop Preysing of Berlin, had he adverted to them. Einstein was not interested in religion as such, even in that of his own Judaism. Although Jewish by birth, while not denying the existence of God, he had lost faith in a divine revelation of any kind. He said he believed in "the God of Spinoza". Spinoza, a 17th century Jewish philosopher, acknowledged God as a kind of universal impersonal intelligence but not as a personal Being with whom man could enter into any personal relationships at all. As a humanist, therefore, Einstein upheld human ideals only, maintaining the right of each person to his individual integrity and the duty of States to protect the rights and liberties of all citizens in the political and social order. Einstein died in 1955. Had he lived to read the Declaration of the Second Vatican Council on the rights of all citizens, regardless of their religious beliefs or lack of them, to social and civic freedom, issued on December 7, 1965, he would have fully approved of the principles proclaimed on this subject by the Catholic Church.

This is a matter of internal ecclesiastical discipline, and one much misunderstood. The Catholic Church insists that no one may be forced to become a priest at all. There is not a priest who could not have chosen to marry, had he wanted to, rather than be ordained as a priest. The Church, however, has the right to make the conditions under which she is willing to ordain those who want to be priests. She therefore says to young men: "You may marry if you wish; or, if you wish and can fulfil necessary conditions of health, education and suitability for such a vocation, you may become a priest; but in choosing to become a priest - as you need not - you must choose celibacy also, renouncing the idea of marriage."

The basis is found in the teaching of Christ and of the Apostles. In Matt., 19:12, Christ is recorded as saying that one who feels called to celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom of God and feels able to adopt it, should do so. St. Paul recommended it, writing in I Cor., 7:7; 8, 33: "I would that all men were even as myself . . . and I say to the unmarried that it is good for them if they so continue, even as I . . . for he that is without a wife cares for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please God. But he that is with a wife cares for the things ~of the world, how he may please his wife; and he is divided." St. John, in Rev., 14:3-5, speaks in the highest praise of celibacy, declaring those who have ever observed it to be particularly honoured and close to Christ in heavenly glory. One can rightly ask here for a basis entitling the Church to make this ideal into a law binding all priests. That basis is found in Christ's words to the Apostles: "Whatsoever you shall bind on earth shall be bound also in heaven; and whatsoever you shall loose upon earth shall be loosed also in heaven." Matt., 18:18. As should be clear, it is for the Church, in virtue of this apostolic authority of "binding" and "loosing", to decide what disciplinary laws should be enacted, maintained, modified or abolished. The ideal of celibacy, of course, can never be unsaid, for that, as an ideal, is the divinely-revealed truth beyond the sphere of disciplinary laws within the competency of ecclesiastical authorities.

The practice of clerical celibacy arose gradually in the Church, developing from an ever-growing voluntary custom into Church laws first imposed by various local synods and finally into a universal law binding upon all priests throughout Western Christendom. The earliest historical record of a local law is that of the Council of Elvira, in Spain, about 300 A.D.; but that Council's decree presupposed and was intended to enforce a long-existing law, since it declared that priests violating the rule of celibacy were to be deposed. Pope Siricius, in 385 A.D., is the first one known to have declared celibacy binding on all priests everywhere throughout Western Christendom. The Eastern Orthodox Churches have their own laws on this matter, which declare that a man already married may be ordained as a priest, but that no one may marry after ordination. One ordained as a single man must remain single. If a married man is ordained and his wife dies, he may not marry again. All Bishops must be celibate and therefore must be chosen from among the unmarried priests only.

The Church could do so, but is not likely to do so. On June 26, 1960, two years before the Vatican Council, Pope John XXIII told the Synod of the Diocese of Rome that it was sheer folly to imagine that the Catholic Church might possibly abandon what has for centuries upon centuries been one of the noblest glories of her priesthood; and he said that the heroic challenge of the ecclesiastical law of celibacy would ever be maintained. In the December of that same year, Etienne Gilson, the French Catholic philosopher, mentioned the subject to Pope John during a personal interview and reported the Pope as saying: "Ecclesiastical celibacy is not a dogma. It is not imposed in the Scriptures. How simple it would be: I take up a pen, sign an act, and priests who so desire can marry tomorrow. But this is impossible. Celibacy is a sacrifice which the Church has imposed upon herself - freely, generously, heroically." On June 24, 1967, Pope Paul VI issued an Encyclical on "The Celibacy of the Priesthood," in which he reaffirmed the law, declaring its binding force for all ordained to the priesthood. He said that the reasons for retaining the law far outweighed any in favour of abolishing it, and that the world needs more than ever today this witness to the highest and most sacred spiritual values. The priest, so closely associated with Christ at the altar, reflects our Lord's own supreme self-giving to the glorification of His heavenly Father and to the salvation of souls. The Catholic faithful in turn, moved to great reverence for their priests, realise that in urging them to a life of self-denial, they are not urging them to what in a special way they have not undertaken in their own lives. Moreover, unmarried priests can work more effectively wherever they may be sent and however difficult the circumstances, expending themselves without imposing on wife and children the inconveniences and often hardships their vocation frequently involves.

It can of course be said that it is only natural to want to marry. But it must be remembered that priests are called upon to rise above being only natural. They have to aim at supernatural standards, their hearts being reserved for Christ and their interest centred in Him and in the welfare of the souls for whose salvation He gave His life. Also, since God does not ask us more than He enables us to do, with a vocation to the priesthood He gives the graces necessary for fidelity to its duties. The condition required of priests, of course, is the maintaining of their spiritual ideals. Human nature being what it is, we should not be surprised by the occasional failures among priests and their falling short, for one or several of a variety of reasons, in living up to their ideals. But newspaper reports can be misleading. I have before me one such report headlined: "6,000 Priests in Six Years allowed to Wed." The years were 1962-1968. The average would be 1,000 per year. On a worldbasis, since there are some 500,000 Catholic priests, the permissions granted would work out at about one in five hundred during each of those years. We must keep things in their proper perspective and realise that the vast majority of priests continue faithfully in the duties expected of them.

Personally, I see no prospect of that. The Church is not without compassion for those who, having commenced the priestly life with the highest ideals, have not succeeded in living up to those ideals. She urges sympathy for them, that all spiritual help be given them, and that they be treated with charity if they have failed to persevere in their original choice. If, however, she grants a dispensation from priestly obligations and permits a return to the lay state, together with marriage, it is on the condition that the one dispensed contents himself with trying to live a good Catholic life among the laity, without further exercising of the priestly ministry which, as Pope John XXIII put it, would be "distressing to the Church and disedifying to the faithful." After all, St. Paul himself wrote sadly of one who had been a companion in his apostolate: "Demas has left me, loving this world." 2 Tim., 4:9. He said no more than that; but it was enough to indicate a lapse from supernatural ideals to merely natural levels in practice, whether or not Demas still retained his faith as a Christian.

In the overwhelming majority of cases the priest himself comes from a family. In the midst of a home-life with his parents and brothers and sisters the thought of becoming a priest dawned upon him. He felt called by God to consecrate his life entirely to an apostolate on behalf of the salvation of souls. But in giving up the idea of founding a personal family of his own, he does not lose his understanding of the ordinary family life from which he came in the first place.

Married people are not the only ones with a claim upon his care; and certainly the priest, who has chosen close imitation of Christ who set the highest example of virtue, at least does not urge upon young unmarried people a self-discipline he has not imposed upon himself. As for married people, a priest hasn't got to be married before he can give wise advice on their problems. He has had long years of study before being ordained, covering all aspects of the ministry he will be called upon to fulfil. He is not without the assistance of God's grace in exercising that ministry; and in one aspect of that ministry above all, that of the confessional, he finds himself dealing with many different ^cases, hearing of more marital problems than any particular couples are likely to experience in their own individual lives.

Very definitely, more of a hindrance than a help. Here a dilemma confronts us. The cause of reunion has to be pursued on two fronts. In the Eastern Orthodox Churches, marriage is strictly forbidden after ordination as a priest. It is true that a man already married may be ordained in these Churches and continue as married; but if his wife dies, he may not remarry. In the Uniat Eastern Churches, that is, those in communion with the Pope, Rome allows this same disciplinary law to continue. It may be that, all else being presupposed, the abolition of the law of celibacy would dispose the Protestant Churches more favourably towards reunion with the Catholic Church; but this would be at the expense of alienating the Eastern Orthodox Churches which are unyielding on obligation of celibacy for single men already ordained as priests. Many people fail to advert to this. Even Dr. Hans Kung, on p. 178 of his book "The Council, Reform and Reunion," makes the astonishing statement that the obligation of celibacy "applies only to the Latin Church." That is simply not true. Taking all aspects of this matter into consideration, therefore, I do not believe that making marriage optional for those who have been ordained as priests in the Latin Rite, contrary to the laws of the Eastern Orthodox and the Eastern Uniat Churches, would be helpful towards the reunion of all Churches. On the other hand, continued priestly celibacy in the Catholic Church would not prove a hindrance to reunion with other Churches having a married clergy N& to their retention of which the Catholic Church would have no objection if the clergy of those Churches had or received a sacramentally-valid priesthood. I am speaking merely from the celibacy point of view, abstracting for the time being from other factors affecting the ecumenical problem.

To speak of the Constantinian image of the Church is to resort to a catch-word and a caricature, as if the Church were merely a monolithic unchanging juridical organisation bent on preserving itself as such, instead of being a living organic body, all its members having within it their own proper duties to fulfil. The distorted Constantinian exaggeration is, for all ordinarily well-informed people, sufficiently obvious to refute itself.

The Second Vatican Council made it quite clear that the Church is spiritually a living single organism, constituting that mystical body, of every member of which St. Paul's words are true: "You are all one in Christ Jesus." Gal., 3:28. Differences of function within the Church no more split the Church than my own body loses its unity because my heart is not my head nor my legs nor my lungs. Institutionally, of course, as a visible society in this world, the Church consists of those in authority and those subject to that authority. The faithful are subject to the pastoral care of the bishops who, as successors of the apostles, are by the will of Christ Himself shepherds of the flock. This is not a "Constantinian image of the Church." It is a question of the constitution prescribed for the Church by Christ Himself from the day of her foundation. It is true that the whole Church is more than the pastors alone. The "Church-teaching" and the "Church-taught" combine to form the "People of God." Pope, bishops, priests and laity are in this sense all equally, "the faithful," subject to the same faith, worship and discipline. Pope John XXIII, when dying, said simply: "Let us do things as a good Christian." He professed his faith, received the Sacraments, and to the end was obedient to Christ and Christ's Church in which he as Pope held the highest office on earth. The fact remains that the three-fold power of teaching, ruling and sanctifying by sacramental means was given by Christ to the apostles and transmitted by them to their successors, the bishops. This transmitted apostolic and hierarchical authority is not from the will of the people but divine in its origin and directly from Christ.

He himself explained that he was using the word "consulting", not in any sense of seeking the advice and consent of the faithful, but in a special theological sense. He said that since the Church as a whole was infallible because indwelt by the Holy Spirit, within the Church as a whole the essentials of revealed truth as handed down by the Apostles have been unerringly preserved. These essentials are to be found in many sources, such as in the writings of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, in her liturgy, in her customs, and in the basic convictions of all Catholics everywhere, taken collectively. In regard to this last consideration, due attention should be paid to what the great majority of the faithful quite evidently regarded as an essential part of the divine revelation to be believed by Christians. Such world-wide agreement was a reliable witness to the infallible tradition of the Church, "granting fully," Newman added, "that the gift of discerning, defining, promulgating and enforcing any portion of that tradition resides solely in the 'Ecclesia Docens'." The "Ecclesia Docens" or "Church-Teaching" consists of the bishops of the Catholic Church acting in unison with the Pope as successor of St. Peter and supreme head of the Church on earth.

The rightful place of the laity must be judged from their sphere of membership in the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ, with the very life of Christ transfused through and active in all of its members without exception. This means that every Catholic, by virtue of his very baptism, has a Christ-function to fulfil, and that the laity have a positive mission, different from that of bishops and priests but equally of the essence of the Church, which should inspire them to work for the realisation of God's plan - the restoration of all things in Christ. The Vatican Council, in its Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, November 18, 1965, a Decree called the "Magna Carta" for the laity, said that the basis of the lay apostolate is the fact that all the faithful are members of the "People of God" and should be, not passive, but active members in both the spiritual and temporal spheres. The mission of the laity is part of the mission of the Church which consists in a spreading of the knowledge of the Gospel and effecting a Christian renewal of society. The means to be adopted consist in the building up of Christian families, the instruction and protection of youth, works of charity, and co-operation with all men of goodwill in promoting the welfare of humanity on both national and international levels. Within the Church, by means of parish and diocesan councils, the laity should willingly become co-workers with their priests and bishops. Pope Paul VI, addressing the "World Laity Congress" in 1967, told the delegates that the world was their field of action: that by their vocation they were in the world; and that they were there to remedy the corrosive secularisation of the social order around them. He added, however, that the lay apostolate must be carried out in unity and with the approval of the Church's divinely-established hierarchy, to cut oneself off from which would be to become like a branch cut off from a tree and from the source of its own life and from the power to bear any of the fruit rightly to be expected from it.

There is not a Catholic in the world, reasonably instructed in his religion and orthodox in his beliefs, be he bishop, priest or layman, who would not agree with that declaration of the Apostolic Delegate to the United States. Nowhere, either in scripture or tradition, can any evidence be found that the layman has been constituted "as teacher of the 'magisterium' " or "as admonitor of the hierarchy." But this in no way excludes a respectful representation of his views by any Catholic to any bishop on matters he thinks sufficiently important to warrant it.

Archbishop Vagnozzi was referring, not to the legitimate, dispassionate and objective expression of one's views and preferences in the public press, but to abuses in this matter. He would agree with Father Karl Rahner's statement in his booklet "Free Speech in the Church" that "to a certain extent the individual within the Church must be allowed to address the Church community in general as a publicist - not only to make direct representations to the hierarchy." But when it comes to a question of airing grievances which can serve only to scandalise good Catholics, deter prospective converts from becoming Catholics, and put material into the hands of the enemies of the Church for further attacks upon her, then love of one's Faith and loyalty to it demand direct representation to ecclesiastical authorities rather than public criticism and often a destructive disparagement of one's religion. It is difficult to see how any thoughtful person could quarrel with a declaration to that effect.

Rightly understood - which is not always the case - there is a sense in which that is true. As the French writer Jean Guitton, a lay auditor at the Vatican Council, has said, secularism today threatens to spread over the face of the earth and create a civilisation without God; and the Church needs to mobilise all her sons, making them realise their dignity and mission. Aware of this, the Vatican Council in its "Decree on the Constitution of the Church", having declared in n.25 that the bishops are the authentic teachers of what must be believed and practised in the Church, continues from n.30 onwards that the laity form an integral part of the People of God; that by baptism they become members of the Mystical Body of Christ and sharers in His priestly, prophetic and kingly functions; that their priestly duty in the world is to offer God the spiritual sacrifice of their praise and work; their prophetic duty to proclaim Christ's message of salvation by their own profession of faith and the social example of their lives; and that their royal dominion over the forces of evil is to be exercised by fidelity to conscience as Christians in all their activities. By doing this, in the words of Jean Guitton, they will not lose their souls in the world but will rather, as men among men, take the world and give it a soul.

Communists would indeed be the victims of an illusion if they thought that the activities of a truly zealous Catholic laity in the Church would in any way further the aims of Communism. For the more the Catholic laity live up to their rights and duties in the Church, the more deeplycommitted Christians they will be in a spirit of supernatural faith, reverence for God, and wholehearted submission to the divinely-given authority of the bishops as the shepherds of the whole flock of Christ; and that, of course, would widen the gap between them and the secular, materialistic outlook of atheistic Communism.

The last words are wrongly translated. Father Rahner said "apart from", not "independent of." While the duty of safeguarding officially the truth as taught by Christ and the Apostles and committed to the Church belongs to the hierarchy as collectively constituting the teaching authority within the Church, it does not follow that spiritual or mystical insight into the significance or even that practical application of any given truth will necessarily be more profound among members of the hierarchy than in some other individual members of the Church. There is a charismatic element in the Church, that is, an enlightenment and inspiration given directly by the Holy Spirit to individual and non-hierarchical members, but not independently of any necessity of obedience to lawful ecclesiastical authority. It is one thing to admit that besides the hierarchical element in the Church there is also a charismatic element; but quite another to suggest that the latter is independent of the hierarchical element. Father Rahner did not maintain that. As a matter of fact, in his "Theology of Pastoral Action", Vol. I, p. 62, he wrote: "Free charisms must account for themselves to the Church's hierarchy when they make demands which concern the life of the Church itself as a sacred society."

No Catholic who knows anything of the nature and history of Catholicism doubts that God not only may, but that He has frequently spoken in such a way; nor only through prophetic laymen but through prophetic laywomen also. The return of the popes to residence in Rome in the fourteenth century after seventy years of administering the Church from Avignon, in France, was due in no small measure to the prophetic voice of St. Catherine of Siena; and if ever there was a prophetic layman it was Frederic Ozanam, a French lawyer (1813-1853), who founded the St. Vincent de Paul Society of Catholic laymen, a society responsible for incalculable good in all kinds of charitable activities and which is still flourishing in our midst. But what has to be noted is that those who are truly led by the Spirit of God in such a way are also filled with a profound spirit of personal humility and of love for the Church, together with the deepest respect for hierarchical authority in the Church and readiness to comply with its official directions in all matters pertaining to religion and to ecclesiastical discipline. There is no surer test of mistaken claims to guidance by the Holy Spirit than the absence of the characteristics I have mentioned.

The idea of residence does not really enter into this matter at all. Christ said to His apostles: "Go, teach all nations" (Matt., 28:19). As the famous American character Mr. Dooley replied, when someone asked him: "Aren't you a Roman Catholic, Mr. Dooley?" "No," he answered, "I'm a Chicago Catholic." He professed the same religion as the Pope; but he certainly was not a "Roman" Catholic from a residential point of view. As a matter of fact, for some seventy years the six Popes from 1309 till 1377 resided, not in Rome, but at Avignon in France. Ecclesiastically, of course, they had been elected to the bishopric of Rome as successors of St. Peter who had died in Rome; but they themselves did not reside there.

It is more a matter of custom or usage than anything else; at least nowadays. There is possibly a latent idea that to speak of Catholics rather than of "Roman Catholics" would be a kind of tacit concession that there are not other kinds of Catholics also. After all, most of them know that in the Apostles' Creed the expression occurs: "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church," although some substitute for that: "I believe in the Holy Christian Church." However, few advert to any theological significance and simply comply with an inherited custom. Even some Catholics adopt what they regard as the generally accepted usage (as one might say, without prejudice to the theological claims of the Church to which they belong).

From a practical point of view, the term "Catholics" is simpler than the rather clumsy expression "Roman Catholics", especially when, in speaking or writing, the longer phrase is repeatedly used. People tire of it, and in any case find it unnecessary since everyone knows what Church is meant when asked, for example, where the nearest Catholic church is to be found in some given locality. I do not think many advert to the linguistic, historical and theological aspects of the question, but we can allude briefly to them. From a language point of view, since the word Catholic means universal there is something incongruous in adding to it a prefix intended to limit it, which would involve speaking of the "not-universal universal Church." From a historical point of view, the term "Roman Catholic" is not Catholic in origin. The Anglican Bishop Frere admits in the "Dictionary of English Church History", p. 543, that the term was invented in England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I to designate those who continued to adhere to the Pope rather than join the newly-constituted Elizabethan English Church. From the Catholic and theological point of view, Vatican Council I, in 1870, discussed this matter and expressly rejected the expression "Roman Catholic" as a description of the Catholic Church, insisting that, if the two words are used, they must be separated, so that at most we can speak of the Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church, the first three terms referring to our religion, the last to the fact that it acknowledges the primacy of the Bishop of Rome.

The better choice would be, not to do the one or the other, but to do both. It is not always possible, however, to do both. In undeveloped areas Mass has to be offered in a hall or a school-church, or even in huts of bamboo and grass. As for the beautiful Cathedrals of medieval Europe, some of which took centuries to build, the American Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his book "English Traits," had the grace to write, opposed to all historical creeds though he was: "In seeing those old Cathedrals I sometimes said: These were built by another and better generation than now looks upon them. The architecture still glows with the faith that inspired them." Meantime, the Catholic Church, probably the most blamed for lavish expenditure on religious edifices, has also been most generous in works of charity to the poor and those subject to suffering of any kind. No Church, proportionately to numbers and resources, has so covered the land with hospitals, homes for old people and for derelict children, and with institutions of all kinds for spiritual and corporal works of mercy. No Church has such an army of Religious Orders and voluntary lay agencies such as the St. Vincent de Paul Society dedicated to every kind of charitable work. One is entitled to ask whether her critics are really interested in the poor or only in seeking a pretext for their criticism of the Church. Certainly, the more materialistic one becomes in his own outlook, the more he begrudges the employment of any resources for religious purposes.

Other factors also need to be taken into account. Christ's esteem for the magnificent Temple in Jerusalem shines out through the pages of the Gospels. He called it His Father's house. He went regularly up to Jerusalem on the greater Feast Days for the ceremonies there. He praised the poor widow who gave all she had towards the upkeep of the Temple (Mk., 12:42). To no one more than to Him would the words of Ps., 25:8 apply: "I have loved, O Lord, the beauty of Thy house and the place where Thy glory dwelleth."

The subject is a fairly regular one for journalists seeking a feature article for the popular press. They are quite safe in saying that the Catholic Church, after nearly two thousand years of existence, with today over six hundred millions of adherents and thousands of institutions spread throughout so many different countries in the world, must have immense resources. But they err by omission in failing to add that the Church's resources are certainly not equal to her actual needs in her administrative, missionary and charitable activities; and they err by commission when they suggest that the possessions of the Church make the Pope himself a wealthy man. Popes come and go, their office not enriching themselves at all. When Pope Pius X died in 1914, he wrote simply in his Will: "I was born poor; I have lived poor; I die poor." He had no property to leave to anybody. When Pope John XXIII was elected as Pope in 1958, one of his first acts was to raise the wages of Vatican City State employees to meet rising living costs. Told there was not enough money available, he insisted that just claims must be met even if, unhappily, there were less available for world-wide charitable donations to distressed refugees or victims of famines, earthquakes, floods and other disasters. Incidentally, early in 1963, Pope John received in audience within the Vatican Aleksei Adzhubei, editor of Moscow's Soviet newspaper "Isvestia," together with his wife, Rada, the daughter of Krushchev. Interviewed afterwards, Rada said that what most impressed her during her Vatican visit were "Pope John's strong, peasant hands, just like those of our workers in Russia!" That might help to disarm some of your Communist friend's prejudices. For the rest, we must take philosophically such articles as the one you have sent me. There will be more of them, whatever we may say of this one; and in any case they do not raise problems which thinking people will not see for themselves to be unrealistic and irrelevant.

Its membership would include approximately one third of the human race. But the prospects of all professing Christian groups uniting in such a way are very remote. There are some denominations - not numerically insignificant - which are strongly opposed to any moves towards such unity, such as the Witnesses of Jehovah, who denounce all conventional Churches; the Mormons, who insist upon the acceptance of the revelations of their founder Joseph Smith; and the Seventh Day Adventists, who regard as a basic obligation the continued observance of the Jewish Sabbath (Saturday) instead of the Christian Sunday. These and other groups for various reasons will not so much as consider the idea of Christian Reunion. Without undue optimism, therefore, Christians interested in the Ecumenical Movement content themselves with relative hopes of success, aiming at as great a unity of professing Christians as will actually prove possible, leaving to God the long-term results of the efforts they make in this direction.

It is impossible to give more than an approximate estimate of the world's population at any given time. At present, it is said that about 150,000 children are born every day. These births are, of course, offset by death-rates which are very variable owing to natural disasters in addition to ordinary causes. But in general, and under present conditions, the birth-rate far exceeds the death-rate. According to a United Nations' Report, in the ten years, 1953-1963, the world's population increased from 2,000 millions to 3,500 millions. Many people are disturbed by what they call this "population explosion", but there are various aspects of this complex question which are almost completely overlooked. One such aspect is that, with the advance of medical science, more and more people are living longer than in former times; so much so that in England, according to a Royal Commission on population, by 1980, if the birth-rate continues falling, eight people will be moving into the oldage pensioner group for every one child born! Were such conditions to become a world-wide phenomenon there would be eventually quite a dramatic fall in the reproduction-rate. That problem, however, we must leave to the future.

It is usual to group professing Christians for general statistical purposes under three headings, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestants. According to the "Encyclopedia Britannica Year Book," for 1959, there were then in the world approximately 510 million Catholics, 129 million Eastern Orthodox Christians, and 210 million Protestants. Apart from other factors and by merely natural increase alone, it would be a fair estimate to say that today the sixteen independent groups of Eastern Orthodox Churches would number between them about 160 million adherents; the many and diverse forms of Protestantism would be able to claim 250 millions; while Catholics, united under Pope Paul VI would add up to at least 600 millions. There should be no need to say that these statistics concern quantity, and not quality. All groups have those who are ill-instructed as well as those better instructed in the knowledge of their religion; and the lax as well as the fervent in its practice.

It is based on the doctrine of the Church as contained in the New Testament. Christ had said: "I will build my Church" - not "my Churches"; and: "If a man will not hear the Church, let him be as the heathen." St. Paul had insisted that there must be "one Lord, one faith, one baptism"; and had warned the Corinthians: "Let there be no schisms" It was to those who were already Christians in the Catholic sense of the word that the early Christian Fathers issued the warnings that one cannot have God for his Father who has not the Church as his mother, and that one can no more be saved outside the Church than, during the Flood, those could be saved who were outside the Ark of Noah. The precise dictum: "Outside the Church there is no Salvation" first appeared in the writings of Origen (185-254), in a discourse on being "in the boat with Jesus." Throughout the course of history, however, we know that certain individuals or even groups did abandon the Catholic Church, establishing separate religious denominations of their own; and as time went on there arose later generations of good people, still professing to be Christians, but who in all sincerity inherited non-Catholic positions not of their own making. Catholics, therefore, to the original axiom "Outside the Church there is no Salvation", add the qualifying clause: "provided their being outside the Church is through no fault of their own."

In general, the distinction is between those who are outside the Catholic Church through their own fault, and those who are outside it through no fault of their own. The axiom does not apply to the latter class. As regards the former class, it could apply to those who have been well-instructed Catholics but who, by their own deliberate choice, have abandoned their faith; or it could apply to those who have never been Catholics but who, having become convinced of the truth of the Catholic Church, have refused to obey their conscience and join it; or who, having adverted for good reasons to the possibility that it might be true, have refused to inquire further for fear that they might actually become convinced and converted - a step which, for motives of convenience under one form or another they want to avoid. Obviously, such people are not in good faith. Forfeiture of salvation always supposes, of course, that such people die without having received and corresponded with the grace of final repentance.

I hold simply that no one outside the Catholic Church through his own fault can be saved. But in these days of divided Christendom one has to stress "through his own fault." When I see a good Protestant, obviously sincere and living a most edifying life, I say to myself: "It is certainly no fault of his that he is not a Catholic." And I often feel that I will be very fortunate if I attain, not only to heaven, but to as high a place there as he will have. At the same time, since Our Lord thought it necessary to establish, commission and guarantee the Catholic Church, it must be necessary to belong to it if one realises the obligation of doing so. There are, then, two extremes to be avoided. We must not so stress the possibility of salvation outside the Catholic Church as to suggest that there is no necessity to belong to it; nor must we so stress the necessity of belonging to the Catholic Church as to exclude all hope of salvation for good non-Catholics. So I have to say to sincere Protestants: "You can be saved because you are in good faith and so excused from the obligation of joining the Catholic Church." But from the Church's point of view I would have to say: "It is necessary to join the Catholic Church and you cannot be saved if you are in bad faith and it is through your own fault that you do not belong to it." (Incidentally, the convinced Protestant, who holds, with Acts, 4:12, that "there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved," would have to adopt that same attitude towards a good Muslim or a good Buddhist as regards at least an acceptance of faith in Jesus Christ).

It is important to note the limitation of his concession to "exceptional cases." I would say that they are very exceptional. Normally, since God wills all men to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth (I Tim., 2:4), and since He never deserts anyone unless that one deserts Him first, a person who has ever had the Catholic faith cannot lose it without rejecting divine grace; and that means moral guilt. If a Catholic got to the stage of thinking he should in all sincerity leave the Church, that merely pushes the fault further back, namely, to his earlier indulgence in things calculated to destroy his faith, or to his neglect of means to preserve it when difficulties first arose by prayer, fidelity to the Sacraments, and by seeking advice. Father Karl Adam himself says in the book you mention that in most cases of lapse from the Catholic Church the real cause is not intellectual but moral, namely, owing to pride, selfcomplacency, contempt for the authority of the Church, or a life incompatible with standards of conduct in keeping with the Christian religion. Cases in which it is possible for a Catholic to lose the faith without any moral fault anywhere along the line are rare exceptions indeed.

That Council was there dealing with the objective truth, not with subjective persuasions. The principles are clear. Truth cannot contradict truth. The Catholic religion is true. Therefore there can be nothing in Scripture, history, philosophy, science, or anywhere else which can actually be opposed to the truth of Catholicism and provide one with reasonable grounds for rejecting it. But the Council did not say that subjectively a Catholic could not wrongly persuade himself that he had sound reasons for abandoning his faith. The problem then arises concerning his moral responsibility for arriving at such a mistaken idea.

According to Catholic teaching, it is possible for them, as human beings endowed with freewill, to save their souls or to lose their souls. Since God wills all men to be saved, He must grant to every man, even a pagan, enough grace to enable him to save his soul. If a pagan corresponds with the inspirations of grace given to him, enlightening his mind, attracting his heart and inclining his will in a right direction, he will arrive before death takes him from this world at faith in God and sufficient sorrow for his sins to save his soul by what we call "baptism of desire." This means that such a man, having the will to do God's will, would ask to be baptised if he knew baptism to be necessary and if there were someone at hand who could baptise him. God takes the will for the deed in such a case and directly grants to the soul the grace necessary for salvation which is normally given to believers by means of the Sacrament of Baptism.

From the fact that it is possible for them to save their souls - we do not know that they will - we cannot argue that they may as well be left as they are and that there is no need to send missionaries to teach them the Christian religion, providing them with all the spiritual blessings that religion can bring into their lives. There is a difference between the possibility of saving one's soul and the probability or likelihood of doing so. One with a knowledge of the Christian religion and with all its helps at his disposal is in a better position than a pagan left in his paganism. But apart from the needs of the pagans themselves, we as Christians are not left free in the matter. We owe obedience to the command of Christ: "Go, teach all nations . . . baptising them." Also, since He said: "I am come to cast fire on the earth, and what will I but that it be enkindled" (Lk., 12:49), our duty is to enkindle the light and the warmth of the knowledge and love of Christ in as many souls as possible. Confidence in the providence of God for the souls of pagans we cannot reach does not dispense us from unflagging zeal in trying to bring the Faith into the lives of those we can reach.

Historical developments provide the explanation of that. From Scripture we know that Christ came as the long-promised Saviour of mankind, wrought the work of our redemption by His life, death and resurrection, and commissioned His Church, "founded upon the apostles" (Eph., 2:20) to go to all the world, making disciples "from among all nations" (Matt., 28:19). In Acts, 2:42, we are told that St. Peter's first converts on Pentecost Sunday, numbering about 3,000, "continued in the doctrine of the apostles." As a practical measure, the Church quite early summed up briefly the apostolic teaching in what we know today as the "Apostles' Creed", to be recited as a profession of faith by those desiring baptism. In 325 A.D., however, the Council of Nicea drew up the longer and more detailed "Nicene Creed", finding it necessary to stress certain additional aspects of Christian teaching, especially concerning the Divinity of Christ which some professing Christians, such as the Arians, denied. Unhappily, in the 16th century, the Protestant Reformation led to the "Divided Christendom" which confronts us today, and in general the basic differences between Catholics and others concern the nature and authority of the Church itself, the doctrine of Papal Supremacy, the number and efficacy of the Sacraments, and above all the significance and importance of the Sacrifice of the Mass. The Catholic Church, therefore, requires of those who wish to share in her membership a profession of faith, not only in the doctrines specifically enshrined in the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds, but also in these particular matters as well as in all else that the Church regards as essential to the Catholic Faith. There is no question here of merely humanly invented teachings. The Catholic Church has no choice but to declare expressly that these doctrines are part of the original apostolic doctrine proclaimed in the name of Christ.

Bishop Moorman, who was an observer of the Second Vatican Council and whose courtesy and scholarship won the respect of everybody there, was expressing his opinion, not of the text itself, but of later historical developments in the Church and of the conclusions of Catholic theologians concerning its implications. As an Anglican, he does not accept the Catholic doctrine of the Pope's supreme authority over the whole Church. But he would say that far too little is made of the text by those who try to escape the fact that Christ intended Peter himself to be the rock on which the Church was to be built.

Biblical scholars have long since agreed that they did. Tertullian — he is early enough, 160-220 A.D. — wrote in his "De Praescriptione", c.22: "Was anything hidden from Peter who was named as the rock on which the Church was to be built, and who possessed the keys of the kingdom of heaven together with the power of binding and loosing in heaven and on earth?" It is true that the early Fathers, presupposing that Peter was the rock, speak at times of the Church as built on the rock of the faith professed by Peter which deserved the office given him; or as built on the rock of Christ who bestowed the primacy on Peter and on whom Peter himself was necessarily dependent; or as built on the rock of all the apostles, of whom Peter was the chief. But to take such references to different aspects of the subject, isolating them from the general patristic agreement concerning the fact itself which gave rise to them does violence to the teachings of the early Fathers.

Undoubtedly. Professor G. B. Stevens, in his book "The Theology of the New Testament" (1906), wrote: "It is quite certain and is now generally admitted that the words 'this rock' refer, not to Christ, nor to Peter's confession of faith, but to Peter himself." In 1910, the Presbyterian biblical scholar Charles A. Briggs wrote in his book "Church Unity," p. 203: "All attempts to explain 'the rock' in any other way than as referring to Peter have ignominiously failed." In 1928, the Anglican "New Commentary on Holy Scripture," p. 168, said: "The rock on which the Church is to rise is Peter himself, not our Lord." In 1936, the Oxford Clarendon Bible Commentary said, p. 201: "There can be no doubt that the words 'I will build my church' were understood by Matthew to refer to Peter himself personally." In 1953, the Swiss Calvinist biblical scholar, Oscar Cullmann, in his book "Peter, Disciple, Apostle, Martyr," points out, pp. 18-20, that the Aramaic word 'Kepha' used by our Lord, sometimes translated into Greek as 'Petros', sometimes transliterated as 'Cephas', was not a proper name but a descriptive title; and that the right meaning is: 'You are the Rock and on this Rock I will build my Church'." On p. 207, Cullmann declares to be unsatisfactory "all Protestant interpretations that seek in one way or another to explain away the reference to Peter . . . the Roman Catholic exegesis must be regarded as correct." In 1956, the Anglican Dr. John Lowe, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, said in his book "Saint Peter," p. 55: "The statement 'Thou art Peter (Kepha) and upon this rock (Kepha) I will build my Church' must certainly be taken to refer to Peter personally." In 1961, the "New English Bible", to exclude all possibility of mistake, translated Matt., 16:18 as "Thou art Peter the Rock, and on this Rock I will build my Church." In 1962, Peake's new and revised Protestant "Commentary on the Bible", p. 788, admits that "the different attempts to interpret the 'Rock' as something else than Peter in person are in most cases . . . expressions of Protestant bias." This was followed by Presbyterian William Neil's admission in his 1962 "One Volume Bible Commentary", p. 343, that our Lord commissions "Peter to be the foundation stone of his Church. Simon becomes Peter, head of the new family of God and with supreme authority over it."

Following Professor Oscar Cullmann, Dr. John Lowe writes in his book, p. 56: "Reluctance to admit this" (that Peter was the 'Rock') "has been due, consciously or unconsciously, to the fear that such an admission is to concede the claims of Rome." Declaring this is a wrong approach, he says the argument should now be, not a denial of St. Peter's unique position, but a denial that the office given to St, Peter was transferable to any successors. "No one," he writes, "could take over Peter's function as the Rock man." In this, he adopts with Cullmann what Cardinal Journet, in his book "The Primacy of Peter," p. 50, describes as Dr. Cullmann's "false dilemma", namely, that Peter's office must either perish with him, or survive him in its entirety. There is an alternative position, that held by Catholics. Catholics hold that St. Peter was endowed with an extraordinary non-communicable gift (as an immediate apostle and witness of the life and resurrection of Jesus) relating to the foundation of the Church, but also with an ordinary communicable gift transmissible to successors and necessary for the preservation of the Church. No Pope claims to be the "Rock" on which the Church is built. The claim is simply that St. Peter's supreme "episcopal" authority is still exercised in the Church through the succession of bishops elected to the primatial See of Rome.

Bishop of Jerusalem, the chief See, preside, and not St. Peter? The Council took place on the eve of the dispersion of the apostles on their mission to "all the world." St. James seems to have been designated as the future Bishop of Jerusalem, but there is no indication that Jerusalem itself had been designated as the "chief See". At the Council, St. Peter manifested his superior authority by speaking first, giving his decision and declaring that, by means of a vision, the course to be adopted had been indicated to him by God. His verdict did not need the approval of the assembly, and it left no room for discussion. "All held their peace" once Peter had spoken (Acts, 15:11). The Anglican scholar, Dr. Trevor G. Jalland, in his book "The Church and the Papacy," says of the subsequent speech of St. James: "It is the summing up of a chairman, not the verdict of an arbiter. If anything, the narrative suggests that it was the evidence of Peter which turned the scales of decision." The same Dr. Jalland says of St. Paul's visit to Jerusalem (Galatians, 1:18) that Paul "admits that he did encounter James . . . but makes it clear that this meeting was purely accidental. Why was it so important to introduce himself to St. Peter? Can we exclude the possibility that St. Paul had some problem of a pastoral or administrative nature, regarding which he had reason to think that St. Peter's opinion would not only be valuable, but decisive?" At most it can be said, as regards the Council itself, that St. James acted as local host, not as supreme ruler of the whole Church.

Precisely because St. Peter was supreme head of the Church. Take the case. The apostles all knew and taught that Jewish laws did not still oblige Christians. Now at Antioch St. Peter had been sharing meals with Gentile converts, but stopped doing so when some Jewish converts arrived in the city. Eating with Gentiles meant defilement according to Jewish laws and St. Peter did not want to shock the Jewish converts who might not yet have grown out of their old ideas. St. Paul rebuked him for this, saying that his conduct would "compel" the Gentiles to acknowledge Jewish laws as still binding. That makes sense only if St. Peter's attitude was decisive and would be imitated by others precisely because of his authority and influence as head of the Church. It is very significant that earlier in this same epistle to the Galatians, 1:18, St. Paul describes how he had gone to Jerusalem especially to consult St. Peter on other matters, indicating that in the present case he felt the affair to be so serious that he even had to reproach Cephas, the very head of the Church, for the imprudence of his conduct at Antioch.

Although it was extended to all collectively, Christ nevertheless gave more to St. Peter than to the others. To St. Peter, whose name He had changed from Simon to "Rock", He had said in the singular: "Thou are Peter (Rock), and upon this rock I will build my Church . . . and I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven." He did not say those additional words to the other apostles. Again, to St. Peter alone, in Jn., 21:15-17, He committed the whole flock, saying: "Feed my lambs . . . feed my sheep;" also, in Lk., 22:32: "I have prayed for thee (again in the singular) that thy faith fail not; and do thou . . . confirm my brethren." The Anglican Dr. John Lowe, in his book "Saint Peter," pp. 60-62, writes of St. Peter: "To try to level him down as merely one among others all on the same footing is not really fair to the evidence . . . no one can take from him his special distinction as the leading disciple of Jesus, the first witness of the resurrection, the first head of the Church, the rock in a special sense on which it was built. On this point the Roman Catholic exegetes have had right on their side, as is increasingly recognised. Where they go wrong, and I say it with all respect to their learning and acuteness, is in the assumption that the commission given Peter includes successors." The real assumption, however, for which no sound reasons exist, is that the supreme spiritual authority conferred upon St. Peter was not meant to be transmitted to successors. Are we to hold that the Church had a visible head on earth only so long as St. Peter was alive, but that it had to continue in a decapitated state all days from St. Peter's death until the end of the world?

For the historical fact of continued succession in the office Christ had conferred on St. Peter we naturally have to look to early Church history. The New Testament records Christ's promise that His Church as He instituted it would last all days till the end of time. This promise implied the constitutional permanence of the office of head of the Church which He had bestowed upon Peter. For subsequent events we can scarcely find a better authority than that of St. Irenaeus, who was taught by St. Polycarp who, in turn, had been a disciple of St. John the Apostle. St. Irenaeus wrote his great work "Adversus Haereses" during the time of Pope Eleutherius, who held office 177A.D. to 189 A.D. and whom Irenaeus described as the "twelfth from the Apostles." In Bk. 3, sect. 2, St. Irenaeus expressly says: "The blessed Apostles, after founding and building up of the Church (in Rome), handed over to Linus the office of Bishop. Paul mentions this Linus in his epistles to Timothy (2 Tim., 4:21)." Irenaeus then lists the successive Bishops of Rome as Linus, Anacletus, Clement, Evaristus, Alexander, Sixtus, Telesphorus, Hyginus, Pius, Anicetus, Soter and Eleutherius, adding: "It is in this order and in this line of succession that the tradition has come down in the Church from the time of the Apostles, and the preaching of the truth has come down to our own day." Eusebius, in his "History of the Church", Book 5, c. 58, says that Pope Victor, the successor of Eleutherius, "was the thirteenth Bishop of Rome after Peter."

It cannot rightly be said that there are no such signs, although the doctrine of Papal Supremacy was not then formulated as clearly as in later times. Cardinal Newman dealt fully with this matter in chapter 4, sect. 3 of his classic work "The Development of Christian Doctrine." He wrote the book while he was still an Anglican, before his reception into the Catholic Church in 1845. Newman was deeply versed in the writings of the early Christian Fathers. Naturally, he held that one cannot rightly expect to find literally and explicitly in the germinal stages of Christian doctrine all the detailed features developed through centuries of later thought and experience. He points out that, theoretically, an adequate formulation of Christian doctrines was not possible until the minds of Christian thinkers had worked out all that they implied; while, in practice, during the first three centuries of persecution until the conversion of the Emperor Constantine and his Edict of Tolerance in 313 A.D., the Church could neither build public edifices nor consolidate itself as an organised ecclesiastical institution. From his studies, however, he concludes that there is "nothing in the early history of the Church to contradict" Papal Supremacy "as part of Christianity." The great Petrine texts (Matt., 16:18-19; Lk., 22:32; Jn., 21:15-17) he declared to be not only precepts, but prophecies and promises to be clarified, in a way not necessary while the apostles were still living, by subsequent events - events which brought out the logical consequences of the original teaching of the Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. As for the earliest of the Fathers, Newman insisted that their writings contained indications of the later developed doctrine of Papal Supremacy. He declared that the doctrine's substance, principle and essential features are found "in writers of many times and countries, illustrative of each other," instances of which he duly quotes. And he concludes that the guidance of the Church by the Infinite Wisdom of the Holy Spirit justified interpreting earlier indications by the way they in fact developed and became the defined teaching of the Church in later ages. Having completed his study of the case, Newman felt that he had no option except to become a Catholic.

Many factors could account for that. The Russian Orthodox theologian Vladimir Soloviev published a book in 1889 entitled "Russia and the Universal Church." In it he arrived at the same conclusion as Cardinal Newman and pleaded with the authorities of the Eastern Orthodox Churches to acknowledge the doctrine of Papal Supremacy. In 1896 he himself was received into the Catholic Church, but seemed to regard himself as still retaining his membership of the Russian Orthodox Church. From this point of view his own position remains ambiguous; but the Russian Orthodox Synod condemned his book outright. Soloviev sadly commented that against sentiments and loyalties of the heart appeals to the head by arguments drawn from Scripture and the early Church history are bound at least from a merely human point of view to remain ineffective. He declared it naive to think that, however necessary biblical, historical or theological arguments may be, these will succeed in remove ing deeply ingrained religious attachments which inevitably colour one's whole approach to the problem. Our agreement with Soloviev on the influence of such psychological factors does not dispense us, however, from examining the evidence in the interests of objective truth, regardless of the incapability or unwillingness of others to see things as they really are.

Their principles certainly required that. The Anglican Professor S. L. Greenslade says in his book "Schism in the Early Church" (1953), p. 18, that as regards the Fathers we must always remember that "it was held on biblical grounds not simply that the Church ought to be one, but that it is one, and cannot but be one. This unity was predicated of the visible Church, and the visible Church was thought of organically as one structure, one communion . . . bodies separated from that communion were outside the Church." Separation from that communion, of course, meant separation from communion with the Pope as Bishop of Rome. Realising this, Professor Greenslade, as an Anglican, has to declare the early Fathers as mistaken as modern Roman theologians, and says that we should abandon a theology of unity for a theology of disunity!

In the New Testament there is one sufficiently clear indication of his presence there. He concludes his first Epistle (5:13) with the words: "The church that is at Babylon salutes you." He was writing about 64 A.D., during the reign of the Emperor Nero. Christians generally at that time used the word "Babylon" as a cryptic name for Rome. There was certainly no other place to which this figurative meaning of the ancient Babylon was applied by them. It would be of no importance, however, if there were not even this reference in the New Testament. At most one could conclude from the absence of it that the New Testament writers did not deal with the matter. Historical documents and archaeological research afford more than enough evidence that St. Peter died as a martyr in Rome during Nero's persecution of the Church.

It must be remembered that St. John wrote the Book of Revelation towards the end of the reign of the pagan Emperor Domitian, who died in 96 A.D. Domitian persecuted Christians, inflicting on them atrocious cruelties. St. John described "Babylon" as being "drunk with the blood of the saints and martyrs" who were dying for their Christian faith, even as St. Peter and St. Paul had suffered martyrdom in Rome some thirty years earlier under Nero. In the Protestant "Torch Bible Commentary" on "Revelation" (1949), the authors Preston and Hanson say: "Anti- Christ was not Christian Rome but the pagan Rome, persecuting the Church . . . Rome as an Empire did fall 350 years later, and by an extraordinary irony, Rome as a city became the new holy city of the Church." TTie interpretation of "Babylon" as "Papal Rome" has no biblical foundation and has practically died away altogether even in quarters whose representatives in bygone years made much of it. No reputable biblical scholar can be quoted in favour of such an interpretation.

It has been cleared up beyond all reasonable doubt by universallyaccepted scholars, Catholic and non-Catholic alike. It will never be cleared up beyond unreasonable doubts, for these can be manufactured about almost anything one does not want to accept. A thorough examination of the literary and archaeological evidence for St. Peter's going to Rome will be found in the Lutheran Dr. Oscar Cullmann's book: "Peter, Disciple, Apostle, Martyr," 1962. Dr. Cullmann concludes, on p. 157: "We must say that he (Peter) came to Rome and there died a martyr under Nero." Dr. Cullmann says that St. Peter's presence in Rome was first questioned in the Middle Ages by the Waldensians (followers of Peter Waldo, of Lyons, who broke away from the Catholic Church) about 1170 A.D. Until then no one in Christendom, East or West, thought of denying the fact. After the 16th century Reformation the Waldensian denial was revived, but through controversial motives, not as a result of objective and scientific study. Dr. Cullmann rejects Papal Supremacy, but says this must be argued on other grounds, not by denying the evidence that St. Peter went to Rome and died as a martyr there.

Archaeological research has confirmed conclusions based on early Christian documentary references to St. Peter's presence in Rome. Excavations under St. Peter's Basilica, which have been going on since 1939, have uncovered a memorial monument to St. Peter mentioned by a Roman writer named Gaius, who lived at the time of Pope Zephyrinus (202-217 A.D.), a monument the building of which archaeologists date from about 150 A.D. A grave connected with this monument was empty, although other graves in the vicinity contained human remains, the area having evidently been a burial ground. In his Christmas broadcast, on December 23, 1950, Pope Pius XII made the statement you quote, admitting that fragments of human bones found near the grave could not be identified as part of the mortal remains of the Apostle. In discussions that followed, archaeologists were divided in their views, some experts, Catholic as well as non-Catholic, expressing doubts about the Pope's opinion regarding the grave itself. Further progress, however, has since been made. Pope Pius XII died in 1958. Early in this year (1965), Professor M. Guarducci, who holds the University Chair of Greek Antiquities and Ancient Inscriptions, published a book describing the discovery of the remains of a human skeleton preserved in a cavity made in a nearby wall about six feet above the empty grave connected with the Gaius monument and beyond the reach of any water-seepage through the damp earth. Greek inscriptions around the cavity have been deciphered as declaring that it contains the remains "of Peter", and that the actual grave is nearby. Earth found within the cavity is the same as that found in the Memorial grave. These further findings by Professor Guarducci and other co-operating scientists, and which were not available when Pius XII publicly declared his opinion, can certainly be regarded as confirming the correctness of his verdict.

Rome" — a very different thing? The answer to that must be yes and no, for he was an Apostle, his apostleship being of much wider significance than, although including the powers of a Bishop. The prerogatives of the Apostles, proper to them precisely as Apostles, were not transferable. But they were able to transfer lesser episcopal powers to the Bishops they provided for the government of the Church in succession to themselves. So St. Paul, by the imposition of his own hands, consecrated both Timothy and Titus as well as others with episcopal jurisdiction in various localities. Thus Acts, 20:28, tells us that on his last visit to Ephesus, he bade farewell to a conference of neighbouring bishops, saying to them: "Take heed to yourselves and to the whole flock wherein the Holy Spirit has placed you as guardians to rule the Church of God." As far as Rome is concerned, it is enough to show that the Bishops of Rome derived their episcopal authority from St. Peter. In this sense. Dr. T. G. Jalland, an Anglican scholar of high repute, says in his book "The Church and the Papacy" (1944), p. 542, that the available evidence shows that Roman Bishops to have been held to be, and to have been in fact, heirs to the authority of St. Peter.

They give various reasons. The Baptist J. R. Mantey, in his booklet "Was Peter a Pope?", begins by saying that if Papal Supremacy can be substantiated scripturally and historically, then the numerous Protestant denominations that reject it are at once disqualified. Efforts are made accordingly to interpret scripture and history in a way which excludes any papal succession to a supreme authority conferred by Christ upon St. Peter. Some have said that Christ had no idea of establishing an organised Church of any kind, but just wanted to gather followers who would be held together by their common belief in Him. Others say no, for He did call the twelve apostles to be the foundation of a new and organised religious society, but that Peter was not made head of the apostles, all of whom were equal. Others, again, say no to that, holding that St. Peter was chief of the apostles, but that any primacy conferred upon him died with him and could not be inherited by any successors. For good measure, others say that in any case Peter was never in Rome; or, if he was, he was never Bishop of Rome; or if he was that, later Bishops of Rome cannot claim to derive their Papal Supremacy from him. So, on various grounds, Protestants say that St. Peter was not the first Pope; and they argue that if Papal Supremacy did become an accepted fact both in theory and practice throughout Christendom, this was mainly due to the city of Rome's political and geographical importance as the chief seat of government, especially after the conversion of the Emperor Constantine.

Here again there are various opinions. All who have studied the subject admit that there was a continuous series of Bishops of Rome beginning with Linus from the time of St. Peter — wherever Peter may have lived and died. But they differ as to which of these Bishops first claimed to be Pope, with supreme authority over the whole Church derived from St. Peter. Some say it was Pope Sylvester, 314-335, who had been elected during the first year after the conversion of the Emperor Constantine. Others say that is too early, and among their other conjectures we find Pope Julius I, 337-352; Pope Damasus, 366-384; Pope Innocent I, 402-417; Pope Leo the Great, 440-461; Pope Gregory the Great, 590-604; Pope Nicholas I, 858-867; and even as late as Pope Gregory VII, 1073-1085. Various historical reasons are suggested, of course, for each of these choices.

Simply that they are based on a misunderstanding of history, not entirely without excuse. The grounds for excuse lie in the fact that where one encounters a development of doctrine, what later becomes clear is necessarily obscure in earlier stages even though as really contained in its sources as a fully developed oak tree in an acorn. Realising this, the Anglican scholar Dr. T. G. Jalland admits Cardinal Newman's explanation that the doctrine of Papal Supremacy was present in principle in the earliest ages of the Church, but that it needed both reflection and circumstances to make its full implications generally realised. Dr. Jalland himself holds that Leo the Great (440-461) was the first Pope in whom Papal Supremacy as derived from St. Peter became fully explicit, but agrees that implicitly the doctrine was always there, and that the statement of St. Irenaeus, 185 A.D., in "Adversus Haereses", Book I, c. 27, namely, that Hyginus in Rome "occupied the ninth place in episcopal succession from the Apostles" (which would include St. Peter as first in the list of Popes) must be accepted. It would take too long to discuss the historical factors which led to the evolutionary development from implicit principles to explicit recognition of Papal Supremacy transmitted from St. Peter as an integral part of the Christian religion; but Dr. Jalland makes it clear that there is no historical evidence of an unjust usurpation of authority on the part of the Popes which had not been attached to their office by Christ Himself through St. Peter, whatever abuses of that authority may have occurred during the lives of individual and exceptional Popes of later ages. The essential doctrine stands which St. Thomas More knew to have been defined by the Council of Florence in 1439, and which he expressed in his own way before going to his death in 1535 rather than deny it, by saying: "I perceived that the Papacy upholdeth all." In St. Peter, not in any later Popes, Papal Supremacy had its real, if implicit, beginning.

You were asking too much. It is one thing to be a Catholic; quite another to be a trained historian. For the average Catholic, the matter is quite simple. The Gospels tell us that Christ made St. Peter head of His Church and promised that His Church would last all days till the end of the world. For Catholics, that means that the supreme leadership entrusted to St. Peter has been transmitted to his successors through the ages; and as only the Bishops of Rome have ever claimed this supreme leadership in regard to the whole Church, Catholics take it for granted that the Popes are indeed the successors of St. Peter. They leave historical and archaeological research to those who have the time and capacity for it. From this point of view, it is enough to say that there is as great a certainty as about any other well-accredited facts of history relating to the first ages of the Church which those who reject papal claims find no difficulty in accepting.

According to St. Irenaeus, the first after the Apostles, Linus, was appointed by the Apostles St. Peter and St. Paul themselves. From then until the conversion of Constantine in 312 A.D., Popes were elected by a majority choice of the clergy of Rome. For some 400 years after the conversion of Constantine, the clergy and laity of Rome could alone validly elect a Pope, but various Christian Emperors had the right to nominate the candidate and confirm the election. All agreed, however, that the papal power was attached to the office of the bishopric of Rome and was conferred upon the Pope by Christ Himself as Head of the Church, not by those who either nominated or elected him. In 768 A.D., a Roman Synod restricted rights of election to the clergy of Rome only. The Third Lateran Council in 1179 limited the right of electing a Pope to the Cardinals only. The Cardinals may elect anyone they wish provided he be a baptised member of the Catholic Church, a valid election requiring a two-thirds majority of votes. This custom has continued till today, apart from a Decree by Pope Pius XII in 1945 that the majority of votes required must be two thirds plus one, to exclude any candidate who happens to be a Cardinal from obtaining the two thirds majority by having voted for himself. No Cardinal may bring into the Conclave or Assembly for the election of a Pope any messages of support for or opposition to any particular candidate from secular governments.

That is for the very good reason that there never was a Pope John XX. The Pope who should have taken that title was acclaimed through an error of calculation as Pope John XXI. Pope John XIX died in 1033. The next Pope to take the name John was elected over 200 years later, in 1276 and was mistakenly proclaimed as John XXI instead of John XX. This means that the title "John XX" is missing from historical lists, but not of course that any Pope is missing.

That "Pope", 1410-1415, was not a lawfully elected one. The lawful Pope at the time was Pope Gregory XII, 1406-1415. The trouble went back to 1378, when Pope Urban VI was elected. Some of the Cardinals, finding him too strict, repudiated their votes for him and thought they were entitled to elect someone else as Pope. Their action gave rise to a line of rival and unlawful Popes, of whom John XXIII was one. At the Council of Constance in 1415 all rival claims were renounced, and in 1417 Pope Martin V was elected and recognised by all.

According to the official Vatican Year Book, known as the "Annuario Pontificio," our present Pope Paul VI is the 262nd Pope, the list commencing with St. Peter.

None at all. He had none to transmit to them. The supremacy they inherit from St. Peter has a purely ecclesiastical significance, although the Church as a visible institution existing in this world cannot escape relationships with other visible societies, such as states and countries, in the midest of which her members live. Inevitably temporal interests proper to the Church developed to which the Popes had to give their attention. But the conditions that prevailed in past centuries were due simply and solely to historical circumstances which have long since given way to the entirely different circumstances of our own times.

There is no truth in that story which owes its origin to a document known as the "Donation of Constantine" and which has been proved to be a forgery dating from the 8th century A.D., four centuries after the death of Constantine in 337 A.D. The temporal power of the Popes developed quite independently of that spurious document. As Toynbee points out in his monumental "Study of History", the Roman Empire fell and Europe survived only because the Popes gave leadership where no other was available. When the barbarian invasions of Huns and Vandals swept down from the north in the fifth century A.D., the then Emperors at Constantinople were unable to defend their Western territories. It was left to Pope Leo the Great (440-461) to confront Attila, the leader of the Huns, and halt his campaign. Pope Gregory the Great (590-604), with no help from the Emperor, had perforce to exercise full imperial powers in the West, saving it from chaos and barbarism. It was 150 years after Pope Gregory's time that Pepin, king of the Franks, came to the defence of Pope Stephen III against invading Lombards and, having defeated them, gave Central Italy to the Pope as "States of the Church." This bestowal, in 756 A.D., is known as the "Donation of Pepin" and there is no doubt about the documentary evidence for it. It was years later than an imaginative but unknown author, to give the impression of venerable antiquity to papal claims to temporal authority, concocted the forged document called the "Donation of Constantine," dating it 317 A.D. This spurious document was proved false by Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa in his book "De Concordantia Catholica", published in 1433. The Papal States in Central Italy, dating from Pepin's gift in 756 A.D., continued in existence until the unification of Italy in 1870. But they formed only one aspect of the whole set-up that prevailed from the fifth century onwards throughout Europe during Feudal Ages and the gradually changing social and political conditions that followed after them. The Anglican Bishop J. W. Hunkin, of Truro, rightly says in his Penguin book: "The Gospel for Tomorrow" (1941) that it is false to charge the Popes with having wrongly acquired temporal authority, for they had had it conceded to them by Western Christendom itself.

We need to distinguish here between the temporal and purely religious aspects of Papal Supremacy. The temporal order that prevailed in the Middle Ages is a thing of the past. With United Italy's confiscation of the Papal States in 1870, Pope Pius IX became simply — as he put it — a "prisoner" in the Vatican. He was a voluntary prisoner, for Italy would have been only too ready to grant him all the rights and privileges available to all Italian citizens. But, although an Italian by birth and with as much love for Italy as any other Italian, Pius IX, as Pope, was spiritual head of the Catholic Church with millions of members belonging to many different nations. He was bound, in virtue of his office, to rise above all national levels, giving Catholics everywhere the assurance that he was not a subject and puppet of any particular government, but independent of all pressures changing political regimes could bring to bear upon him. Succeeding Popes, Leo XIII, Pius X, and Benedict XV, adopted the same attitude, renouncing Italian citizenship and remaining within the precincts of the Vatican, insisting that their position as subject to no worldly ties and loyalties but quite independent of them must be recognised not only by Italy, but internationally also. The problem was solved in 1929 by the Lateran Treaty between Italy and Pope Pius XI, under which Italy agreed that Vatican City State had its own sovereignty and that the area within its boundaries was no longer Italian territory, subject to Italian laws. Vatican City State was not intended as a continuation of the confiscated Papal States. Pope Pius XI renounced all claims to those, Italy in turn acknowledging a newly-established sphere of temporal rule restricted to an agreed 109 acres independent of any outside political control and as a guarantee visible to all nations of the Pope's freedom from the dominating influence of any earthly powers. All this, however, leaves unaffected the question of Papal Supremacy in the spiritual order over the world-wide Church as successor of St. Peter. That remains; and on the whole, modern Popes are relieved to find themselves free from the temporal cares that burdened their predecessors, and able to devote all their attention to the purely ecclesiastical responsibilities. What we have to ask ourselves is whether the religious doctrine of Papal Supremacy over the whole Church is or is not an essential part of Christianity as taught by Christ and proclaimed by the Apostles.

That suggestion runs into historical difficulties which merely need stating. Firstly, the English Church was not consulted on the matter. The absolute Tudor monarch, Henry VIII, made the decision, telling the clergy what they had to do and compelling a subservient parliament in 1534 to pass an Act of Supremacy declaring himself to be the only supreme head of the Church in England. Secondly, Henry in this matter was concerned only with the realisation of his own selfish interests about which the less said the better. Thirdly, he was strongly opposed to, and wrote against the continental reformers who abandoned Catholic doctrines in the name of returning to primitive New Testament Christianity. Apart from emancipating himself from papal authority, he wanted the Catholic religion to remain as it was; so we have the strange spectacle of his penalising Catholics for denying his own supremacy over the Church in England and Protestants for denying the Sacrifice of the Mass! England had to wait for the death of Henry and the following reigns of Edward VI and later of Elizabeth I before the introduction of the Protestant ideas of the continental reformers became possible. Henry's 1534 Act basically demanded only the substitution of the Royal Supremacy over the Church in England for the hitherto acknowledged Papal Supremacy, as held throughout the rest of Christendom. There had been, of course, conflicts from time to time on administrative levels between Rome and various civil principalities, including England. But of these the Anglican Archbishop Cyril Garbett, of York, writes frankly in his book "Church and State in England" (1940), p. 40: "The true nature of these controversies is often misunderstood." (They) "sometimes have been misinterpreted as the attempt of an indignant Church and patriotic nation to escape from thraldom to Rome. However much we might wish this had been so, the actual facts give no support to a theory so congenial to later-day Protestantism. Both Church and State accepted the spiritual supremacy of the Pope."

No falsity of any ninth century documents can avail against claims made centuries earlier. The notorious "False Decretals" were fabrications, pretended papal letters and conciliar decrees which were inserted about 845 A.D. in a French compilation of genuine canon laws. Their purpose was to defend diocesan bishops against metropolitan archbishops in France by stressing their right of appeal to the higher papal authority which all acknowledged already and which was more than sufficiently established by the genuine documents in the collection of Church laws. The Anglican scholar, Dr. T. G. Jalland, in his book "The Church and the Papacy", p. 377, says that these genuine documents were "indubitably authentic"; that the interpolated "False Decretals" contributed nothing to the doctrine itself of Papal Supremacy; that the Papal Chancery itself showed a remarkable hesitation in regard to them; and that those who through prejudice cite them to discredit papal claims have seriously misunderstood them.

We cannot think in terms of a political democracy where the Church is concerned. Israel of old was chosen by God to be "His People." The only choice left to Israel was whether the people would be obedient to His will. All through the Old Testament the prophets reminded them that God had chosen them from among all the nations, not for their own purposes, but for His. As the prophet Amos reminded them, God had brought them out of the land of Egypt and could say to them: "You only have I known of all the families of the earth." (Amos, 3:2). Christ, in turn, could say to His disciples, as called to be the "New Israel" or "People of God": "You have not chosen me. I have chosen you." Jn., 15:16. To Christians generally St. Peter wrote that they were a "chosen generation . . . who in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God." I Pet., 2:10. But Christ Himself chose St. Peter and the other Apostles, Peter being the first in importance amongst them, to exercise authority in the Church in His name. St. Peter was to be the chief shepherd of the whole flock (Jn., 21:15-17). The authority was divinely-given from above, not conferred democratically from below by the members of the flock themselves.

It certainly ranks for them among the major problems; and it is here that, in the interests of reunion, dialogue and understanding will be most necessary. On February 18, 1965, Cardinal Bea, President of the Catholic Secretariat for Christian Unity, visited and addressed the .Ecumenical Assembly of the World Council of Churches at Geneva. Quite frankly, although with a courtesy and charity which all appreciated, he told the Assembly that between Catholics and other Christians "there is complete divergence on the structure of the Church." "For us Catholics," he said, "Christ entrusted His religion wholly to the College of the Apostles, of which Peter was the head. Unity cannot be achieved except in union with the Catholic Bishops as historical successors of the Apostles, with the Bishop of Rome as Supreme Pontiff."

History does not support that. St. Bernard, St. Thomas of Canterbury, even St. Catherine of Siena, a nun, while fully acknowledging papal supremacy, sent strong protests to the Popes of their times against papal decisions; and, far from being expelled from the Church, they were later canonised by the Church as Saints. Fraternal correction even of a superior, with all due respect, can be a definite duty in defence of what one believes to be right. One, of course, may not be right; but full allowance is made for the conscientious convictions of those who are manifestly sincere and who go about things in the right way, respectfully yet none the less firmly protesting against what they think to be wrong, even though they themselves may be wrong in thinking as they do.

The Popes are as obliged as all others in the Church to obey the precepts of the Gospels and to conform their will to the will of Christ in fulfilling the duties of their office. Also there are precedents to be observed. Although purely ecclesiastical laws can be changed, until they are abrogated, they may not be ignored. We have all heard the anecdote of Pope John XXIII's rather exasperated exclamation: "I'm in a bag here," when, after his election, he found himself told by the Curial Cardinals that some things he wanted to do just could not be done. The Second Vatican Council went quite far towards remedying that by declaring that the authority of the Bishops throughout the world as successors of the Apostles by divine institution counted much more than that of the Curial Cardinals whose office was not of divine institution; and that the Bishops, acting collectively with the Pope, shared responsibility in the government of the Church. An American Presbyterian observer at the Council, the Rev. Robert McAfee Brown, remarked in his account of the Council's "Constitution on the Church" that "the principle of 'collegiality' or of corporate authority of all Catholic Bishops, so heavily supported by the Council Fathers, lays to rest many of the grotesque stereotypes of 'one-man-rule' and unilateral papal monarchialism." He was right as regards the exclusion of exaggerated estimates of Papal Supremacy which he knew to be prevalent among many non- Catholics. Nevertheless, the Council declared that the "collegiality" of the universal episcopate must always include the Pope as head of the college or collectivity; that as head the Pope retains primatial authority over the whole Church; and also the right as occasion demands to exercise that authority on his own initiative. Normally, however, on major issues, it can be taken for granted that papal decisions will have been preceded by consulations with the world episcopal conferences, or their delegated representatives in special Synods. Another non-Catholic observer at the Vatican Council, the Anglican Bishop John Moorman, said after its conclusion that in any case, if final Christian unity is to be achieved "there will have to be a central head of the Church, and that head will clearly have to be the Bishop of Rome."

Your tribute reflects the universal esteem in which he was held. He was certainly a man of deep faith, humility, piety and an all-embracing charity. In his will, he stressed that he had come from a poor peasant family and said that he had vowed poverty when quite young and had observed it, that no relatives had ever benefited materially from his having become a priest and that he had nothing to leave them except his blessing. When told that death was near, he accepted the fact uncomplainingly despite his being unable to complete the work of the Vatican Council in which he was so interested, saying to his doctor: "So I have a tumor. Well, the Will of God be done. My bags are packed and I am ready, more than ready to go." Then he asked for the last Sacraments, saying: "Let us do things as good Christians." Pope John XXIII set us all an example both of how to live and how to die.

Alexander VI, the "Borgia Pope", held office over 400 years ago, during what is known as the Renaissance period of history, from 1409 till 1503. I declared his personal life in many ways disgraceful and quite incongruous with his office, however successful an administrator he may have been, as undoubtedly he was. But I pointed out, firstly, that Popes, like all other men, have to work out their own salvation. To be elected as a Pope is not to get a through ticket to heaven, but only to have one's responsibilities before God immeasurably increased. Christ Himself said: "Unto whom much is given, of him much shall be required." Lk., 12:48. If Alexander VI led an evil life personally, one can only hope that he repented before he died; otherwise he will have lost his soul. Meantime, the Catholic Church not only does not bid us imitate anyone's vices, no matter who he is. She forbids us to do so. Secondly, all the Popes throughout the centuries have professed the same religion and held the same office; yet out of the 262 Popes over eighty of them have been canonised as saints because of their having died as martyrs for the faith or because of their outstanding virtue and holiness. Thirdly, the proportion of Popes who have been really unworthy of their office works out at about one in forty, whereas the proportion of failures among the apostles chosen by Christ Himself was one in twelve. Fourthly, unworthy Popes in past ages are no argument against the truth of the Catholic Church but, if anything, prove the Holy Spirit's protection of her, not only despite external adversities, but despite even such a disaster within as an unworthy man succeeding to the office of St. Peter as head of the Church on earth.

Ordinary historians are not sufficiently interested in that topic to discuss it. Those specifically interested in religious history and who do not allow prejudices to sway their judgment can quote only about five or six out of the 262 Popes as examples of personal depravity in one form or another. A balanced judgment on this matter is that of the Anglican Dr. T. G. Jalland in his book "The Church and the Papacy." On p. 543 he writes: "In spite of the occasional failure of individual Popes to uphold a morality consistent with the demands of their high office, it is a strange form of historical blindness which is unable to perceive in the long and remarkable history (of the Papacy) a supernatural grandeur which no mere secular institution has ever attained in equal measure . . . The Papacy defies a categorization which is purely of this world."

No lawfully elected Pope can be deposed. A lawful Pope can cease to be Pope only by death; or by his own resignation, as in the cases of Pope Celestine V in 1294 and Gregory XII in 1415; or by losing the faith and thereby separating himself from the Church. There is no known case of this last condition having occurred, and most theologians say it would not be possible owing to our Lord's prayer for St. Peter, which would apply to his successors for the good of the Church: "I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not; and do thou . . . confirm thy brethren" (Lk., 22:32).

There is no law in the Catholic Church to that effect. The instructions in Canon Law for the Cardinals called together for the election of a Pope are that they must put aside all personal motives and vote for the one whom, in the sight of God, they sincerely believe best fitted for the office. Throughout history there have been in fact many non- Italian Popes.

The changes of history make that very difficult, if not impossible. For example, we tend to think today of anybody born within the geographical limits of the Italian Peninsula as an Italian. But thousands of years ago people so born would no more have thought of themselves as Italians than the early Britons before the Anglo-Saxon invasions would have thought of themselves as English. In dealing with the Popes we have to span a period of almost 2,000 years. It should not be surprising, of course, that since whoever is elected as Bishop of Rome is Pope, out of 262 Popes, 115 have been Roman-born. But for the first 300 years before Constantine no citizen of Rome would have considered himself an Italian. Even through the centuries since the time of Constantine what we call Italy has gone through all kinds of changes of independent cities and states. Italy attained to national and political unity only in 1870. Before then, there were Popes from, say, Lombardy, who would not have regarded themselves as being of the same nationality or even race as a Neapolitan, Sicilian or Sardinian Pope. From this point of view the problem of the nationality of the Popes is a very complex one. The case is clearer with those born outside the geographical limits of the Italian Peninsula. St. Peter himself was, as we. know, a Galilean Jew. In a descending numerical order — not chronological — since his time there have been seventeen French Popes, fifteen Greek, six Syrian, four German, three African, three Spanish, two Dalmatians, one English, one Portuguese, one Slavonic and one Dutch Pope.

Using the term Italian to cover the whole post-Reformation period even before the unification of Italy in 1870, that is true. All things else being equal, it would of course be natural that, since Rome is an Italian diocese and each Pope is elected as Bishop of Rome the people there should be given an Italian-speaking Bishop, just as in Englishspeaking countries an English-speaking Bishop would be preferable. But independently of the fact that the Pope is the Bishop of the diocese of Rome, there are various reasons why the Cardinals should have thought it wiser to elect an Italian as Pope in post-Reformation times. Even Protestants could take a more detached and less prejudiced attitude towards a Pope not chosen from among the Catholic Bishops of their own religiously divided countries — one perhaps with whom they had been in immediate contact and in a possibly heated polemical atmosphere. The present and growing ecumenical spirit of greater understanding and tolerance is, after all, but of yesterday. However, it is quite possible that, in the near future, a non-Italian will again be elected as Pope. In any case, once a Pope is elected as head of the visible Church on earth and Vicar of Christ, he must have an equal care for Catholics of all nations and not regard himself as holding office for the special benefit of any particular nation. From that point of view it would not matter to what country or nation he belonged prior to his election.

The First Vatican Council, in 1870, proclaimed as a dogma or required article of faith that, under due conditions, the Pope himself exercises "that infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer willed His Church to be endowed for defining doctrine regarding faith and morals." It is the infallibility of the Catholic Church, therefore, which on such occasions expresses itself through him. (On the infallibility of the Church as such, see also Qs. 177-188 above).

In general, it is certain from many New Testament passages that Christ constituted His Church as an infallible teaching-authority to which He guaranteed perpetuity all days till the end of the world and the protection of the Holy Spirit against the teaching of error in religious and moral matters. He could not have sent His Church to preach the gospel to every creature, saying: "He who believes shall be saved; he who believes not shall be condemned", if the Church could oblige men to believe error, leading them astray. St. Paul, therefore, declared the Church of the Living God to be "the pillar and the mainstay of truth." Through all phases of later developments, in all essentials the unchangeable faith of the Church remains secure and intact.

The New Testament makes it clear, although many professing Christians pay insufficient attention to the fact, that Christ called and appointed the Apostles as leaders and official rulers of His Church, and spokesmen in her name. So, at the Council of Jerusalem, they declared: "It has seemed good to The Holy Spirit and to us." Acts, 15:28. Since infallibility as an essential characteristic of the true Church had to continue with her till the end of time, it could not but be operative in the Bishops as successors of the Apostles and as the organs of the infallibility proper to the Church herself. Historically, this infallibility of the Catholic Church expressing herself through the official teachings of her Bishops at least taken collectively was ever recognised. Thus the 2nd century St. Irenaeus wrote: "Those who inherit succession from the Apostles in the episcopate participate in the grace of truth according to the will of God the Father."

Much in that declaration needs sorting out. Firstly, one who firmly believes in the Catholic religion believes that the Catholic Church was founded, commissioned and guaranteed by Christ our Lord to preserve and proclaim to mankind the true religion which He had taught the Apostles. Secondly, having come to the use of reason, we are expected to use it by checking the grounds for our faith in Christ according to His life, character and work; and also for our faith in the Catholic Church as that one historical religious society which has come down to us continuously from the time of the Apostles, which is truly Catholic or for all men regardless of racial or national differences, and which so aims at the salvation and sanctification of her members that those of her members who have fully lived up to her teachings and directives have in fact become Saints. Thirdly, granted such reasonable justification for having faith in the Catholic religion, we accept on faith whatever the Catholic Church officially teaches as essential to it; and we willingly fulfil those duties which the Church with the authority Christ gave her imposes upon us. Fourthly, the infallibility of the Church can be considered directly or indirectly. Directly, it pertains to the essentials of divinely-revealed truths, whether in solemnly proclaiming this or that doctrine as a necessary part of our faith or in condemning a doctrine as opposed to it. Indirectly, infallibility at least preserves the Church from officially approving of beliefs and practices calculated to undermine the faith. Directly and positively infallible teachings we accept, not blindly, but in a spirit of faith in Christ with due humility and obedience on our part. But it is necessary to note that, besides the area of essential beliefs and practices, there in a large area - much larger than most people imagine - of opinions more or less probable in biblical and theological matters, and of pious practices permitted but not imposed, in which Catholics are free to follow what they feel to be their own reasonable preferences. As you do not say on what things you disagree with the Church's teachings, I am not able to discuss the nature and gravity of the teachings involved, nor how your dispositions fit in with the firm belief you profess in the Catholic religion.

The Apostles were given divine authority within the Church to teach, to rule, and to sanctify her members. They therefore could legislate in regard to doctrine, or in regard to merely external discipline, or in regard to the religious and moral lives of the faithful. Owing to the gift of infallibility promised to the Church as such, the assistance and protection of the Holy Spirit extends to all three forms of legislation, whether enacted by the Bishops assembled collectively in a General Council, or by the Pope alone as successor of St. Peter and head of the Church on earth. Whether, technically, the infallibility of the Church finds expression in a particular decision is another matter. That would have to be decided from the circumstances and the terms in which the decision was formulated.

Because reasons for defining them have not arisen earlier. It would be surprising if the age-long pondering over the revealed teachings of the Christian religion did not give rise to a deeper understanding of them and a new insight into their significance. But side by side with this advance differences of opinion have also risen, or perhaps denials of basic doctrines which new theories have overlooked; or this changing world in later stages may confront the Church with a general outlook unknown in previous times. These and other possible factors as they occur may call for an uncompromising and infallible declaration by the Church of exactly what their Christian faith requires Catholics to believe.

All Christians knew of that doctrine in general from the formula for baptism "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit" as contained in Matt., 28:19. But in explaining the meaning of the terms Father, Son and Holy Spirit and the relationships between them, different early writers fell into different errors. Some taught practically that these were three distinct Gods; others that only the Father was God, the Son and the Holy Spirit being only creatures and inferior to Him. I cannot go through all the variations here; but the confusion that arose became so widespread that in 325 A.D. the Council of Nicea defined the doctrine of the Trinity as we know it and as embodied in the Nicene Creed; that is, of three equal and divine Persons possessing one and the same divine Nature. It is difficult to see any problem in the fact that definitions of doctrine were given as the need arose for them.

The various books of the Bible were written by human beings. If they were not rendered infallible by God, what they wrote could not be quoted as the infallible Word of God. Yet if God did render them infallible for the purpose of recording His Word, on whatever other grounds one rejects the infallibility claimed by the Catholic Church, it cannot be on the ground that no human beings can be rendered infallible by the Holy Spirit.

That concerns another matter altogether. Infallibility does not mean impeccability. It means that even a human being prone to doing the wrong thing can at least be so safeguarded by God that he will say the right thing. Scripture tells us that "the holy men of God" (i.e., the prophets of old) "spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit." 2 Pet., 1:21. Yet take the case of one of them. Isaiah, when called to be a prophet of God, was supremely conscious of his unworthiness. "Then said I," he wrote, "woe is me! For I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips." Is., 6:5. One cannot disprove an infallibility conferred by God by references to the weaknesses of the human instruments He chooses for the purpose of manifesting His will.

You leave out of consideration the possibility that God might render a human being infallible for His own purposes within the limits of those purposes. St. Paul had no doubts about God's having done this where the apostolic preaching was concerned. He wrote to the Galatians (1:8): "Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach to you a gospel besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema;" that is, condemned and rejected. The apostles were human beings and the words they had spoken constituted the irreformable Word of the Lord. Again, Jude 3 certainly regarded what the evangelists had written and what the apostles had preached as accredited spokesmen for the Church as being the irreformable Word of the Lord. "Contend earnestly," he wrote, "for the faith once delivered to the saints." The infallibility of the Catholic Church means simply that the Holy Spirit by His supernatural power renders her unable to teach officially as being an essential part of the Christian faith anything which in fact conflicts with the gospel as taught by Christ and by the apostles themselves.

The problem belongs to a deeper level than that on which you are working. It concerns the nature of revealed truth, the act of faith by which it is accepted, and the authority by which it is mediated to us. Revealed truth concerns mysteries of religion believed solely because God has revealed them. Our faith, Scripture tells us, is "the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." Heb., 11:1. The last word cannot rest with the results of biblical, historical and theological research, or our faith would be in biblical scholars, historians and theologians — and that is not Christian faith. Christ stressed the fact that faith is a supernatural gift of God when He said, "No man can come to me unless the Father who has sent me draw him." Jn., 6:44; and St. Paul tells us that God has "chosen the foolish of this world to confound the wise." I Cor., 1:27. Human intelligence is to be respected, of course. Scholarship is a good thing in its own sphere; but it cannot produce Christian faith. Catholic scholars may ask whether and how particular doctrines are contained in what God has revealed and manifested in Scripture, in traditional clarifications of it, and in official declarations of the Church concerning it. But the actual faith of these scholars, as long as they remain Catholics, is not faith in their own ability to prove things to their satisfaction, which would mean faith in themselves! Just as a simple unlettered Papuan in some remote native village becomes a convert, experiencing a faith awakened within him by the grace of God as he listens to the preaching of a Catholic missionary, so the most learned theologians accept all the truths of faith taught authoritatively by the Catholic Church. That is faith in Christ speaking through the Church He founded upon the apostles and to whom He said: "He that hears you, hears me." Lk., 10:16. For Catholics, therefore, however learned and intelligent they may be, that a dogma is an essential part of divinely-revealed truth is sufficiently demonstrated when it is clear that the Catholic Church has infallibly defined it as such.

Christ commanded His apostles, and through them His Church, to preach the gospel. That supposes a body of truths put before us which is not the fruit of our own wishful-thinking. Again, Mk., 16:20 tells us that the apostles "preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the message by signs that attended it." This supposes that we have not only been confronted with the truth of the gospel, but that Christ Himself offers us the grace enabling us to believe if we have the will to do so, and more than sufficient evidences to render our choice a reasonable one and no mere act of blind credulity. Certainly reason alone can verify the historical facts concerning Christ and His religion, realising that no merely natural explanation can account for them. The one remaining problem and responsibility for each man is whether or not he is prepared to accept the divine authority of Christ and of His Church, adopting their teachings or refusing to do so. The teachings are to be accepted, of course, as a set of religious convictions upon which one intends to base his life in practice to the best of his ability; for, as St. Paul says: "The just man lives by faith." Gal., 3:11.

Of God's providence we are not the judges. But we cannot assume that He does not offer a person sufficient grace to enable him to accept the faith when it has been seriously brought to his attention. Commissioning His apostles to preach the gospel to every creature, Christ said: "He who believes and is baptised will be saved; he who does not believe will be condemned." Mk., 16:16. The attaching of salvation to belief and condemnation to unbelief supposes that to every man who has had the gospel sufficiently put before him and is of goodwill, God is prepared to grant the grace of faith. Christ Himself said: "The light is come into the world and men loved darkness rather than light." Jn., 3:19. The conditions on man's part are sincerity, humble repentance of sin, courage in facing difficulties of a practical nature, and prayer — conditions not all are willing to fulfil.

The idea itself is surely not an unfamiliar one to us. Witnesses in our law courts give their evidence under oath, calling God to witness that what they say is true. Also, in our naturalisation ceremonies, the State requires an oath of allegiance from new citizens. To confirm a statement by oath before God is an act of religion, proclaiming one's belief in Him and consciousness of responsibility to Him. Naturally, not trivial, but only serious matters justify declarations on oath. That it is lawful to do so when necessary is evident from Scripture. St. Paul himself did not hesitate to "call God to witness" (2 Cor., 1:23) to the truth of his words. And the Catholic Church, in the very serious matter of preserving the divinely-revealed truth entrusted to her, rightly required of those called to exercise any office in her name a sworn declaration that any errors she had condemned as being opposed to that divinely-revealed truth they also whole-heartedly condemned and rejected. An understanding of why the making of such a declaration was imposed requires a knowledge of the circumstances prevailing at the time.

Modernism was a movement which arose about 1900 A.D. among some Catholic biblical scholars, philosophers and theologians. These, while still professing to be Catholics, tried to explain the Catholic religion as the product, not of a divine revelation, but of a merely natural evolution of man's inner and subjective religious experience. Such a principle was of its very nature calculated to undermine any permanent and objective value of Sacred Scripture, of the authority of the Church, of the Mass and the Sacraments and of all else in the Catholic religion. Some Modernists did not deny that, useful as these may have been found in the past, evolving religious experience would go on evolving and would eventually change the Catholic religion out of all recognition. In 1907, Pope Pius X, realising that these new tendencies were destructive of all Christianity as a supernaturally-revealed religion, condemned Modernism as a "synthesis of all heresies", and in 1910 decreed that all who received ordination to minister in the name of the Catholic Church or undertook major ecclesiastical appointments must, besides making a profession of their Catholic Faith, add a sworn declaration that they sincerely rejected the Modernism he had condemned. The 1918 Code of Canon Law omitted reference to the Oath against Modernism as being concerned with only a temporary episode in the Church's history, prescribing simply a solemn Profession of Faith before ordination as a priest and again before further assuming any major ecclesiastical responsibilities. But the particular law outside the 1918 Code of Canon Law still remained in force, requiring the Oath against Modernism, until 1967 when the new Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith abrogated it and decreed that the solemn Profession of Faith as required by the Code of Canon Law would of itself be henceforth sufficient.

Here we turn from the doctrine of Papal Supremacy in the Church to that of Papal Infallibility. Rightly you refer to the infallibility of the Church, for it is the infallibility of the Church which becomes operative on certain occasions in official decisions of the Pope himself as head of the Church and intended to be binding upon all members of the Church. Papal Infallibility, however, does not mean that any special revelations are granted to the Pope. God has revealed Himself and His purposes in word and deed as recorded in the Old and New Testaments, that is, through the history and the prophets of Israel as well as through Christ and His Apostles. We see God at work, for example, in the call of Abraham, in the liberation of Israel from Egypt to be His Chosen People, in the long series of Israel's prophets, and in the greatest act of all for which these prepared the way, His own breaking through into human history in the Person of His Eternal Son. That Divine Son, under the name of Jesus Christ, lived and died for the salvation of mankind, and rose again from the dead, having founded a new community or new "People of God" on earth, known as His Church. To His Church, in the persons of the Apostles, Christ who accomplished the work of our salvation entrusted the duty of teaching all nations whatsoever He had taught (Matt., 28:30). The Pope, as successor of St. Peter and Christ's chief representative in the Church, is infallible only in the sense that the Holy Spirit safeguards him against officially teaching as an essential part of the Christian religion anything not in accordance with the Truth as contained in Holy Scripture and in the divinely-safeguarded traditional teachings derived from Christ and the Apostles.

The infallibility of the Pope means, not that he receives revelations, but that he, for the sake of the whole Church, is divinely preserved from officially teaching as part of the Faith what is in fact opposed to the Truth God has revealed. And such protection of the Pope against leading the whole Church astray is in itself a great mercy. As for the way in which God's mercy provides for the salvation of mankind, whether by His actions in history or by revealing a knowledge of His designs, it is not for us to tell Him what He should or should not do. It is for us to accept what He has chosen to do and adjust ourselves to that. As regards His mercy, the great redemptive act of Christ on Calvary affects all mankind, providing all, both before and after it, with graces or helps at least sufficient for salvation right through history, even for those who through no fault of their own have not known of it. As a result, no one can be lost except by his own deliberate rejection of God, whose mercy is available to all who seek it. Knowledge of ways and means provided by God and an insight into His purposes is another matter. The whole human race does not exist simultaneously. Generations progressively follow generations; and God's plan has been progressively manifested. With the coming of Christ as the Redeemer, the mission of preserving and propagating a knowledge of the Truth was entrusted to the Apostles and the Church Christ founded upon them. Faith in the authoritative teachings of His Church is the means appointed by Christ for our knowledge of the Truth; and one who knows yet rejects this will be responsible to God for having been without the Truth and for not having lived in accordance with it.

The doctrine was part of the teaching of Christ and of the Apostles. To make the implicit truth explicit and clear, the doctrine was defined as a dogma or article of the Catholic Faith by the First Vatican Council in 1870. Pope Pius IX himself did not decide the issue. For centuries there had been discussions among theologians as to whether the Catholic Church, which all admitted to be infallible as a Church, gave final and definitive expression of her teaching in a General Council together with the Pope, or whether the Pope alone apart from a General Council could also speak infallibly in the name of the whole Church. Over fifty years before Vatican Council I Joseph de Maistre, a French diplomat, author and prominent Catholic layman, energetically maintained in 1817 that the final, infallible court of appeal must be the Pope, with or without a Council. The question was a very vital one. In 1848, two years after his own election, Pius IX wrote to the then 603 Catholic bishops in the world asking whether they thought Papal Infallibility ought itself to be defined as an Article of Faith. Of the 603 bishops, 546 said yes. Twenty-two years later, when the First Vatican Council met, Pope Pius IX left the discussion entirely to the assembled bishops, not attending the Council's discussions but presiding only at the public Sessions. On April 29, 1870, he had a document read to the assembled bishops declaring that he had no intention of bringing any pressure to bear on the decisions of the Council, and that he would proclaim the "Constitution of the Church" with or without any clause defining Papal Infallibility according to the majority vote of the assembled bishops for or against it. More than a two-thirds majority voted for it and Pope Pius IX accordingly promulgated the Definition as formulated by the Council. The suggestion that he acted by himself independently of the Council in this matter is without foundation.

It did not have to be. Over a century before the First Vatican Council Pope Benedict XIV, who was elected in 1740, not defining anything but speaking simply as a theologian, said that even in a General Council the Pope is not bound to decide in conformity with the majority. Quoting Christ's words to St. Peter: "I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not, and do thou confirm thy brethren" (Lk., 22:32), Benedict added: "Not this one nor that one, but whether a minority or a majority." In fact, at Vatican Council I, more than a two-thirds majority voted for Definition.

That is a misreading of the evidence. At the Council's preliminary debate there were 150 speakers who addressed the assembly, some putting the case for the Definition, others putting the case against it. There were two sets of votes to be made, one in a preliminary closed Session on July 13, the other in a Public Session on July 18, when the Pope himself would preside at an open ceremony in St. Peter's Basilica. At the July 13 meeting there were 601 bishops present. After long discussion, the voting was 451 for the Definition; 62 for it, provided some amendments were made; and 88 against it, a few because they thought the proposed declaration wrong, most because they thought it inopportune to define the doctrine as a dogma of the Faith however true it might be. When some of the suggested alterations were made in the wording of the proposed Definition, twenty of the minority agreed, making 471 votes for it, with 130 votes against it. Already there had been a two-thirds majority, and this increased it. Many of the bishops regarding the matter as settled returned to their dioceses without waiting for the Public Session. Of the bishops who remained in Rome, 435 were present at the Public Session on July 18, 66 absenting themselves from it. In the Public Session 433 voted for the Definition, only two expressing dissent; and these two announced their complete acceptance the moment Pope Pius IX proclaimed the Definition of Papal Infallibility as approved by the Council majority. The 66 absentees sent a joint letter to the Pope saying that they had not wanted to attend and publicly declare their minority vote against the decision lest they should give any impression of lacking respect for the Holy Father personally or give cause for possible disedification among the faithful. All the absentees eventually declared their full acceptance of the defined doctrine, either in public statements to that effect or in personal letters to the Holy See.

Awareness of God

The Faith of Israel

The Importance of Man

Origin of the Gospels

The Divine Redeemer

The Catholic Church

The Papacy

The Biblical Tradition

The Blessed Virgin Mary

Liturgy and Sacraments

Moral Problems

Final Realities

The Ecumenical Movement

Catholic Apologetics in Question & Answer Form

Awareness of God

The Faith of Israel

The Importance of Man

Origin of the Gospels

The Divine Redeemer

The Catholic Church

The Papacy

The Biblical Tradition

The Blessed Virgin Mary

Liturgy and Sacraments

Moral Problems

Final Realities

The Ecumenical Movement

QUESTIONS IN VOLUME 5

201. Father Kung suggested that it would be a magnificent manifestation of freedom in the Church if the law requiring the advance censorship of books on religion by Catholic writers were abolished.

202. What is the purpose of the "Index of Forbidden Books"?

203. Does the Church hold that God's Law itself forbids all reading which is likely to undermine one's faith or morals?

204. Did not Professor Albert Einstein say that the Catholic Church, because of its authoritarian character, is necessarily the enemy of freedom?

205. Is it not a violation of freedom that those who become priests should have celibacy forced upon them by the laws of the Church?

206. What basis is there in Scripture for the celibacy of the clergy?

207. How did the celibacy law originate?

208. If celibacy is a Church-made law, could not the Church abolish it?

209. Newspapers report large numbers leaving the priesthood in order to marry. Are not such priests just seeking a more natural way of life?

210. Do you think the celibacy law will soon be relaxed, allowing priests to marry who wish to do so, while continuing actively in their priestly vocation?

211. If allowed to marry, would not the priest have a better understanding of family life?

212. Would he not be better able to advise married people in difficulties that threaten to break up their marriage?

213. Would you regard the abolition of celibacy for priests as a help or as a hindrance to reunion of all professing Christian Churches?

214. You still seem to uphold the Constantinian image of the Church.

215. You split the Church into a teaching, ruling and sanctifying authority, and a laity taught and ruled, having only "to pay, pray and obey."

216. Cardinal Newman wrote a special treatise "On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine."

217. Even religiously, the Vatican Council has urged the Catholic laity to take their rightful place in the Church.

218. The Apostolic Delegate to the United States, Archbishop Vagnozzi, recently told American Catholic intellectuals: "The layman has not been constituted as teacher of the 'magisterium', nor as admonitor of the hierarchy."

219. The Delegate said that when, after mature deliberation, one wants to inform those in authority of the people's problems or inspirations, they can do it directly rather than by sending critical letters to the press.

220. We are frequently reminded, even by Catholic writers, that this is "the day of the laity."

221. Would not the Communists, as a means towards their own ends, certainly like to see the laity gaining positions of control in the Church?

222. Father Karl Rahner, S.J., a consulting theologian in Rome during the Council in 1962, said in a lecture there: "The entire hierarchy does not hold all the keys to the temples of truth." He stressed that there is a "charismatic" element in the Church "independent of the tables of organisation."

223. Father Rahner said: "Just as God in the Old Testament spoke through the prophets who were not priests, so He may in this century speak through prophetic laymen."

224. When you speak of the Catholic Church I presume you mean the Roman Catholic Church, because the head of that Church resides in Rome

225. As all Christians are aware of the general description of themselves as either Catholics or Protestants, why do Protestants always speak of Catholics as Roman Catholics?

226. Why do Roman Catholics normally prefer to speak of themselves simply as Catholics?

227. Instead of building beautiful Cathedrals and churches, would it not have been better to have built homes for old people and for the poor, declaring those to be for the honour and glory of God?

228. Those who claim to be followers of Christ should remember that He chose absolute poverty, saying: "The Son of man has nowhere to lay his head." Matt., 8:20.

229. At work, a Communist gave me the enclosed newspaper article entitled: "Just How Rich is the Pope?" The article says no one knows, but his resources must be immense.

230. If all Christian groups united in one great Church, how would its membership compare with the rest of the world's population?

231. What is the world-population today?

232. How do the major Christian groups compare numerically with one another?

233. When did the Catholic axiom originate that "Outside the Church there is no Salvation," and on what is it based?

234. Can the axiom he said to apply only to baptised Catholics who have deliberately cut themselves off from the Catholic Church?

235. What is your own attitude on this matter?

236. Father Karl Adam, in "The Spirit of Catholicism", says more and more Catholic theologians agree that the loss of the Catholic Faith without moral guilt is possible "in exceptional cases."

237. To say it is possible at all seems to contradict Vatican Council I, which declared that "a Catholic can never have any just cause for changing or doubting his faith."

238. What does the Church hold as regards the fate of pagans who never had the chance of receiving Christian baptism?

239. If such pagans, knowing nothing of Christianity, can get to heaven in any case, are not foreign missions for their conversion unnecessary?

240. When converts are received into the Catholic Church, why is it not enough for them to profess their faith merely in the words of the Apostles' Creed?

241. As regards Papal Supremacy, the Anglican Bishop John Moorman says that, exegetically and historically, "Far too much has been made of the words of our Lord to St. Peter: 'Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church.' (Matt., 16:18)."

242. Did the early Fathers believe Christ meant Peter personally when He spoke of the "rock"?

243. Do modern Protestant biblical scholars themselves admit that Christ was referring, not to Himself, but to Peter?

244. Granted such an admission, how can they avoid acceptance of Papal Supremacy?

245. At the Council in Jerusalem (Acts, 15:6-29), did not James, as Bishop of Jerusalem, the chief See, preside, and not St. Peter?

246. If Peter was given the supremacy, why did Paul rebuke him to the face, as in Galatians, 2:11-15?

247. Was not the authority of "binding" and "loosing", i.e., of legislating, given equally to all the apostles, just as to Peter (Matt., 18:18)?

248. No mention is made in the New Testament of Peter's authority being passed on to any successor holding a particular office.

249. Granted a succession of bishops in Rome, why, during the first 250 years, was there no sign of recognition that the Bishop of Rome was greater than the bishops of any of the other great Sees?

250. Other good and scholarly men have read Newman's book, yet have not felt impelled to take the step he did.

251. Did the early Fathers regard union with Rome as necessary?

252. Does Scripture anywhere say that Peter was ever in Rome?